Knowledge House Final Report by JISC infoNet

Final Report Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

good practice & innovation

Knowledge House Trial 2010 07 09

Author(s):

Paul Cranner

Main Contact:

Paul Cranner

Department:

Knowledge House, 3 Ellison Terrace, Newcastle upon Tyne, NE1 8ST

Revision History Date

Version

Description

Changed by

29/6/2010

0.1 Initial draft completed

Paul Cranner

1/7/2010

0.2 Formatted and proof read

Paul Cranner

2/7/2010

0.3 Proof read and additional content

Kevin Ginty

5/7/2010

0.4 Proof read + comments

Alan Sanderson

7/7/2010

0.5 Budget summary added

Paul Cranner

9/7/2010

1.0 Final version (removed guidance notes and updated TOC)

Paul Cranner

Final Report Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

good practice & innovation

Contents 1

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ......................................................................................................... 4

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY .......................................................................................................... 4

BACKGROUND ...................................................................................................................... 5

AIMS & OBJECTIVES.............................................................................................................. 6 4.1

DEVIATIONS FROM OBJECTIVES ...................................................................................................... 6

IMPLEMENTATION................................................................................................................ 7 5.1

FOOD PROCESSING FARADAY PARTNERSHIP ..................................................................................... 7

5.2

STAFFING ISSUES ......................................................................................................................... 8

5.3

OFFICE RELOCATION .................................................................................................................... 8

5.4

A NEW TRIAL PARTNER – ONE INWARD INVESTMENT TEAM .............................................................. 8

5.5

DELAYED KHIS 2.0 LAUNCH .......................................................................................................... 9

5.6

KNOWLEDGE HOUSE CLOSURE ..................................................................................................... 11

5.7

A THIRD TRIAL PARTNER – MJ ASSOCIATES ................................................................................... 11

5.8

KHIS CHAMPIONS EVALUATION ................................................................................................... 12

5.9

OPEN SOURCE STUDY ................................................................................................................. 12

METHODOLOGY.................................................................................................................. 12 6.1

KHIS DATABASE DESIGN............................................................................................................. 13

6.2

KHIS APPLICATION DESIGN ......................................................................................................... 13

OUTPUTS............................................................................................................................ 13 7.1

MJ ASSOCIATES TRIAL ................................................................................................................ 13

7.2

KHIS CHAMPIONS EVALUATION ................................................................................................... 19

7.3

OPEN SOURCE STUDY ................................................................................................................. 21

7.4

THE KHIS PLATFORM ................................................................................................................. 22

7.5

IPR ......................................................................................................................................... 22

SUSTAINABILITY ................................................................................................................. 23

OUTCOMES ........................................................................................................................ 24 9.1

OVERALL AIM ........................................................................................................................... 24

9.2

OBJECTIVES V OUTCOMES ........................................................................................................... 24

9.3

IMPACT ON STAKEHOLDERS ......................................................................................................... 25

LESSONS LEARNED .......................................................................................................... 27

10.1 2 of 53

LOSS OF TRIAL PARTNERS ............................................................................................................ 27 www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk

Final Report Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

good practice & innovation

10.2

STAFFING ................................................................................................................................. 27

10.3

RESISTANCE TO CHANGE ............................................................................................................. 27

10.4

OTHER PROJECTS....................................................................................................................... 27

10.5

TECHNICAL ISSUES ..................................................................................................................... 28

10.6

COLLABORATIVE SUPPORT WIKI ................................................................................................... 29

10.7

TOP TEN TIPS............................................................................................................................ 29

CONCLUSIONS ................................................................................................................ 30

IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS....................................................................... 31

REFERENCES ................................................................................................................... 31

13.1

PAPERS .................................................................................................................................... 31

13.2

WEBSITES................................................................................................................................. 31

13.3

SUPPORTING WEBSITES .............................................................................................................. 31

DISSEMINATION SUMMARY ............................................................................................ 32

14.1

ONLINE PUBLICITY ..................................................................................................................... 32

14.2

JISC EVENTS ............................................................................................................................. 32

14.3

OTHER EVENTS.......................................................................................................................... 32

GLOSSARY ...................................................................................................................... 33

APPENDIX A

PROJECT PERSONNEL........................................................................................ 34

APPENDIX B

A BRIEF HISTORY OF KHIS ................................................................................. 35

B.1

KHIS 1.0 ................................................................................................................................. 35

B.2

KHIS CHAMPIONS GROUP .......................................................................................................... 35

B.3

KHIS 1.5 ................................................................................................................................. 35

B.4

KHIS 2.0 ................................................................................................................................. 35

APPENDIX C

GENERAL KHIS 2.0 REQUIREMENTS................................................................... 37

APPENDIX D

KHIS CHAMPIONS FEEDBACK ............................................................................ 40

D.1

COMPLETED QUESTIONNAIRES..................................................................................................... 40

D.2

DISCUSSION OF QUESTIONNAIRE RESULTS ..................................................................................... 50

APPENDIX E

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ONE TECHNICAL SPECIFICATION SUMMARY.......................................................... 53

www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk

Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

1 Acknowledgements The ‘Knowledge House’ trial project was funded by JISC under the ‘Facilitating Collaboration’1 stream of the BCE programme2 as part of the ‘Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE’ project3. JISC infoNet4 led the delivery of outputs with support from other JISC Advance Services5. The trial project team would like to thank the following for their hard work and contribution to this trial project as well as the wider BCE agenda: 

The KHIS Champions for their priceless input and patience during the development of KHIS 2.0



Mark Jackson for continuing to believe in KHIS and support the trial following his departure from Knowledge House for pastures new



The University of Sunderland’s Centre for Internet Technologies for invaluable technical advice



Lynnsey Rayne, Laura Major and Laura Kingston from Knowledge House for their invaluable feedback and testing during development of KHIS 2.0 and their work on KHIS training material



Enigma Interactive’s Stephen Moretti for his technical support during development of KHIS 2.0



JISC’s Jacquie Kelly, Andy Stewart, Will Allen and Owen Roberts for their support and guidance during the project



The other trial projects for input and advice during interim meetings

2 Executive Summary Knowledge House is a collaborative service which helps companies access the skills, expertise and resources available within the five universities in North East England. To support the work undertaken across the network, a bespoke collaborative project management system is used – the Knowledge House Information System (KHIS). The purpose of the Knowledge House trial project was to investigate the feasibility of adapting KHIS for use outside of the university environment, as a generic project management system. This report outlines the main objectives of the project, describes the activities involved in meeting them and evaluates the outcome of the trial. Lessons learned are then stated and consideration given to how the project results can be exploited and furthered in the future.

1 2 3 4 5

www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/bce/stream2.aspx www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/bce.aspx collaborativetools4bce.jiscinvolve.org www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk www.jiscadvance.ac.uk

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Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

3 Background Universities for the North East (Unis4NE) is the regional association of the universities in North East England – Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside. Knowledge House (KH) is a collaborative service offered by Unis4NE to help companies access the world class skills, expertise and specialist resources available within these five universities. Established in 1995, Knowledge House offers expert solutions for developing ideas and solving problems through collaboration, consultancy, training and research. Originally planned to provide a service to local SMEs, the service grew to include large companies and multi-nationals. The role of Knowledge House as a pioneer in university/business engagement has been recognised at the highest levels of Government and attracted international acclaim. Lord Sainsbury, Minister for Science and Innovation for many years, commented "The work that Knowledge House does is really important. It is a role model for other parts of the country." Accolades for the activities of Knowledge House have also come from an OECD report studying fourteen regions throughout the world, which described Knowledge House as “global best practice” OECD (2007). Knowledge House operates via a hub and spoke model, with a small central headquarters (KH Central) located in Newcastle and staff distributed at all five partner universities. To support the work undertaken across the network, a bespoke, web-based collaborative client/project management system is utilised – the Knowledge House Information System (KHIS). KHIS handles the full project life cycle and supports the sharing of project and contact information across multiple teams, thereby allowing them to collaborate and be aware of other activities that may be related to their work. The system was designed in-house to meet the very specific requirements of universities and interactions between them. However, Knowledge House has long held the belief that KHIS could be opened up for use by non-Higher Education (HE) institutes. In the first instance, this would simply be companies working with member universities on projects. Yet, KHIS could potentially be customised to meet a different set of non-HE specific requirements; thereby allowing it to be rolled out to individuals, SMEs or larger public/private sector organisations to manage projects and interactions with clients. The purpose of the Knowledge House trial was to investigate the feasibility of adapting KHIS for use outside of the HE sector. This goal was in line with Knowledge House’s role as a regional pioneer and innovator and represented the next logical step in the evolution of KHIS. For reference and background, profiles of the key project personnel are included in Appendix A.

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Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

4 Aims & Objectives The overall aim of the project was to validate whether the brand new version of KHIS – KHIS 2.0 – could be adapted for use outside of the HE sector. 6 KHIS 2.0 was due to be rolled out to the five member universities in the summer of 2009, several months after the project commenced. Pending acceptance of KHIS 2.0 from the core university users, the plan was to work with an external user organisation and tailor KHIS to their requirements so that they could then use it to manage their own projects and clients. A separate installation of KHIS was to be established specifically for the purpose of the trial. Although KHIS can be highly customised to meet individual requirements without affecting other users, it was considered prudent to keep the trial system separate until it had been fully tested and evaluated. The organisation in question was Food Processing Faraday Partnership (FPFP)7. FPFP is an independent provider of services to help the food supply chain turn knowledge into business solutions. It delivers major projects for Regional Development Agencies, provides food industry focused consultancy and delivers competitive advantage through technology to key clients. The project comprised five distinct phases: 1. Requirements gathering and analysis – elicit requirements from FPFP 2. Technical specification – document the customisation required in order for KHIS to meet the requirements 3. Development – implement and test the changes, resulting in a customised version of KHIS to be used during the trial; concurrently, produce supporting training material 4. The trial – FPFP are trained to use the customised system to manage their projects, reporting feedback to the development team (iterative with phase 3) 5. Evaluation – application of metrics to determine whether the trial was successful and document lessons learned As an additional objective of the evaluation phase, Knowledge House undertook to identify the criterion that makes software a likely Open Source (OS) candidate and alternatives to OS such as Software as a Service (SaaS), with a view to determining the OS potential of KHIS. The plan was to complete phases 1 and 2 during the first few months of the project, whilst KHIS was rolled out to the universities. Once the system had been launched, the trial system could then be established and customised.

4.1 Deviations from Objectives Although the overall objectives remained the same, soon after the project started several problems arose which immediately impacted upon the projected timeline:   

FPFP unexpectedly withdrew from the project The launch of KHIS 2.0 was delayed due to technical issues Project Manager and Senior KHIS Developer, Rachel Armstrong, fell pregnant and departed on maternity leave

These issues, and how they were resolved, are discussed in Section 5, below.

6 7

For a brief history of KHIS, including the rationale behind the development of KHIS 2.0 refer to Appendix B www.fpfaraday.com

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Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

5 Implementation The implementation phase of the project was conducted by Knowledge House personnel, utilising experience and system knowledge from the original development cycle. The development team was based in offices in Sunderland and then Northumbria University following the relocation of KH. The development system was hosted alongside KHIS at the University of Sunderland. The project team regularly interacted with the other Knowledge House stakeholders â&#x20AC;&#x201C; primarily the KHIS Champions â&#x20AC;&#x201C; in the Unis4NE partnership. Initially, the user requirements gathering exercise was complicated by the changeover from the initial target user, but this was handled by the team with minimal impact on the end result. In principle, the needs of the second and subsequent end user were not dissimilar to those originally envisaged, and so the project itself wasn't unduly delayed. The development team worked on a dedicated virtual server, which allowed a completely isolated trial version of the system to be made available, whilst retaining the functionality of the original system for that user community. The additional hosting support required for virtualisation, the hosting of the physical server and networking provision were provided by the University of Sunderland. The availability of MJ Associates as the client for this development was fortuitous in the end, as in addition to the experience and knowledge of KHIS, the end user is also actively working with the business model and proactively following its development. This is most probably a rather better user outcome than that originally envisaged in the first project plan. The user, and staffing changes are documented below, and the development process is discussed in Sections 6 and 7. Of particular interest from a research point of view, and also from a precommercialisation perspective, is the investigation into the practicalities of Open Source deployment which was carried out during the project (see 5.9).

5.1 Food Processing Faraday Partnership Soon after the project commenced, FPFP unexpectedly withdrew. This was due to a merger with two other Knowledge Transfer Networks (KTNs) and the inevitable organisational restructuring that would follow. The new organisation planned to deploy a new CRM system and they felt that trying to embed two new systems simultaneously would require too much effort and increased workload. 5.1.1 Potential Alternatives Although a significant blow, Knowledge House utilised its vast network of contacts and identified two potential new partners. The first was the North East Knowledge Transfer Partnerships (KTP). Discussions were held with the Regional Director to discuss using KHIS to circulate KTP enquiries to the five universities and 23 Further Education (FE) colleges in the North East and the Open University. While in practice this process is simple, the major stumbling blocks were political with sensitivity around protecting competitive advantages. The other issue to emerge was that the KTP network would need to get the 23 regional FE institutes to agree to use KHIS, and it was considered that this process would take too long to negotiate. The second was Design Network North8 (DNN), a project led by the Regional Technology Centre North9 and for which Knowledge House was already delivering work for. DNN were interested in using KHIS for their Boomerang initiative. Acting as a forum for designers, Boomerang provides answers to difficult design questions where particular expertise is required. It was envisaged that KHIS could be used to circulate such questions to the regional universities. Although DNN was very 8 9

www.designnetworknorth.org www.rtcnorth.co.uk

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Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

enthusiastic about KHIS, during discussions it became evident that they had not fully identified how the Boomerang service would operate. The door was left open for DNN but it was felt that the projected timescales involved would mean the trial would start too late for it to be practical.

5.2 Staffing Issues Two staffing issues affected the project during its infancy – VAT and pregnancy. 5.2.1 VAT Paul Cranner was contracted from the University of Sunderland’s Centre for Internet Technologies (CIT) to work alongside Rachel Armstrong to implement the required technical customisation of KHIS. VAT was not factored in when the project budget was prepared but, upon formalisation of the contract, it transpired that it had to be charged. This impacted upon the amount of time Paul could spend on the project. To maximise it, it was decided not to utilise technical consultant Stephen Moretti, whilst Kevin Ginty agreed to provide technical guidance free gratis in an informal capacity. 5.2.2 Maternity Project Manager Rachel Armstrong also fell pregnant in the summer of 2009 and planned to take maternity leave from January 2010. Knowledge House acted swiftly and secured the services of Paul on a full-time secondment to cover all of Rachel’s KH duties in 2010. Paul was the ideal candidate: he had been involved with Knowledge House since 2005, was well known to the KHIS community and had worked closely with Rachel during development of KHIS 2.0. Although Paul was now going to be working on the project full time in 2010, the loss of Rachel would mean that he would be working alone. To cover this, Kevin agreed to take a more active role supporting Paul. This was considered important as it gave Paul someone to bounce ideas off and discuss technical issues with; something he and Rachel had found to be extremely useful previously to ensure the correct technical solution was applied to problems.

5.3 Office Relocation In October 2009 Knowledge House relocated offices from Sunderland to Northumbria University in Newcastle. This led to inevitable downtime of a week or two. The most significant issue was firewall related. The Knowledge House servers are located at the University of Sunderland; due to the security protocols in place at both sites it took over a week before secure remote access was established. Unfortunately, the servers hosted the KHIS version control repository and development database and this held up development work at a crucial period. Although frustrating, this problem was clearly a one-off and it at least demonstrated the effectiveness of the security protocols.

5.4 A New Trial Partner – ONE Inward Investment Team At the same time as the office move, a new trial partner was found – One North East’s Inward Investment Team (ONE). KH Projects Manager Julie Swinbank was contracted to ONE to support and attract investors to the North East by promoting the regional universities. The enquiries she received from ONE were not standard enquiries and therefore could not be handled by KHIS in the usual way. Instead, Julie used a bespoke Excel spreadsheet in tandem with some functionality from KHIS 1.5 to manually generate reports. The reports assisted ONE in the development of sales “messages” to clients and helped strengthen the case for investing in North East England. It was envisaged that, by promoting the activities of the regional universities, the business case for companies to invest in the region would be enhanced. Being familiar with KHIS, Julie believed the system could be adapted for use by ONE to give them increased project control and reduce inefficiencies. She also felt there was potential to roll the system out to other teams within ONE in order to increase the transparency of project activity. Julie began working with Rachel and Paul and a Technical Specification detailing the required system 8 of 53

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Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

customisation was drafted in October 2009 (see Appendix E for a summary of the key requirements). In parallel to the development of KHIS 2.0, the main requirements were successfully implemented.

5.5 Delayed KHIS 2.0 Launch Due to the office relocation, change of trial partner and the issues outlined below, the rollout of KHIS 2.0 to the five universities was delayed until November. As soon as the rollout was complete, the plan was to begin customising KHIS as per the Technical Specification. However, this was dependent upon the system being “signed off” by the universities. 5.5.1 User Testing During development of KHIS 2.0, a test site was established and accounts created for the key users from Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside. As development progressed, code updates were regularly released to the test site and users asked for feedback. Some sites were more active during this phase than others. However this was not down to a lack of commitment; it was primarily down to the different way each university has historically used KHIS and the perceived importance of KHIS 2.0 within each institute. For instance, Durham and Sunderland were reliant upon KHIS as they use it as a core tool to assist day-to-day business development activities. Teesside and Newcastle, however, simply log responses to circulated enquiries as they have invested in their own CRM systems to meet institutional objectives. Launching KHIS 2.0 was therefore a high priority for some, whereas other institutes were unable to commit resources to system testing, which led to delays. 5.5.2 Familiarity with KHIS 1.5 Several of the universities have been long term users of KHIS 1.5 and were reluctant to switch over from a system which had been tried and tested over many years. Although KHIS 2.0 offers the same core functionality, users felt uneasy about the revised screen layout and changes to key workflows. To combat this, several approaches were taken: 

User guide Two members of KH staff (Business Support Officer, Lynnsey Rayne and Marketing and Projects Officer, Laura Kingston) produced a user guide describing how to use KHIS 2.0. Both Lynnsey and Laura use KHIS on a daily basis to post and circulate new project opportunities. It was considered important that the manual was written by people who actually use the system, as opposed to the developers, as their viewpoints are very different. What a developer might consider trivial, users might not understand at all, so it was important that the manual was written in a way that end users could easily follow.



KHIS Champions Meeting Once a month, nominated representatives from each university – aka the KHIS Champions – meet with the development team to discuss ongoing development work, problems and concerns. This forum has proved to be an excellent way of identifying problems, eliciting feedback and educating the users about how to use the new system. Each representative is then able to report back to the users within their own institute. This approach in particular has proved to be extremely effective and, by actively involving users in this forum, their trust in KHIS 2.0 steadily grew.



On-site visits Site visits were also arranged to discuss specific concerns with each university. Meetings were arranged with teams of users and on a one-to-one basis. The team meetings allowed overall concerns and expectations to be addressed, whilst the individual sessions allowed the development team to actually observe how people used the system. Both proved to be very useful in alleviating problems and promoting the benefits of KHIS 2.0.

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Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial



Training sessions Individual training sessions were also arranged with the KHIS Champions to teach them how to use KHIS 2.0 and get the most out of it. The KHIS Champions were then able to deliver a similar training session to users within their own university.

5.5.3 Technical Issues Having addressed the concerns of the universities, KHIS 2.0 was given the go-ahead to launch in November 2009. In tandem with the launch it was agreed that KHIS 1.5 would remain live as a readonly site for legacy purposes. Although the launch went according to plan, over the coming weeks several notable problems emerged which unfortunately impacted upon the trial with ONE. 5.5.3.1 Performance The most significant gripe reported by users was the slow speed of the system. KHIS 2.0 was designed to address the major drawback to KHIS 1.5 – i.e. its inflexibility (see B.4). As a consequence of the revised database architecture (see 6.1) a slight reduction in performance was anticipated. However, the poor performance was extremely noticeable with operations that took one second in KHIS 1.5 now taking up to thirty seconds to complete. Upon investigation, the problem was found to be largely due to the volume of data imported from KHIS 1.5. During the testing phase only recent data (i.e. less than two years old) was imported. This volume of data did not cause significant speed issues and was not reported as being problematic. However, when the system was launched, all data was imported. This dated back as far as 1995 and comprised hundreds of thousands of records; only at this point did the speed issue emerge. To combat this, several measures were taken: 

Archive old data I.e. projects and all related data (e.g. documents, emails, actions, financials, etc.). Due to the volume of data it was not possible to simply bulk archive. Instead, the KHIS Champions were asked to provide a set of “archive criteria” which could be applied to their institute’s data. Typically, this was projects with a status of “closed” or those which had not been updated in two years. Once all old data had been archived, system performance improved considerably. Functionality was then added to the system to allow archived data to be searched if required. By default, though, searches are set to only search non-archived data. Subsequent feedback from users confirmed that system performance had improved. The speed improvement and involvement of the users in addressing the problem lead to a greater buy-in. By actively involving them, the users became more understanding as they could see problems were being proactively tackled.



Utilise faster hardware Perhaps an obvious step, the KHIS database was moved to a faster server, equipped with a better processor, more memory and a faster hard disk. This again resulted in user reports of improved performance.



Streamline code By analysing log files and harnessing debugging tools, several bottlenecks in the system were identified. As a result, some of the core system code was revised and streamlined to run more efficiently. Although this took several weeks to fully implement and test the end result was fruitful with users reporting near parity with the speed of KHIS 1.5.

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Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

5.5.3.2 Bugs As with the launch of any new system, no matter how much it is tested beforehand, bugs are inevitable. This indeed was the case with KHIS 2.0, although the majority were thankfully minor. Several mechanisms were used to record bugs: 

Automatic error logging KHIS 2.0 automatically logs errors and emails notifications to the development team. This proactive measure has resulted in several problems being fixed within 20 minutes of the error occurring and has been commended by the user community.



Bug reporting system The open source TRAC bug reporting system10 allows users to lodge tickets. Often problems do not result in an actual error message; instead there could be an anomaly with missing data or a user might want to request an additional system feature. TRAC allows such things to be recorded and automatically notifies users of status changes to tickets.



KHIS Champions Meeting The Champions Meeting has proved to be the ideal forum in which to address bug reports. In fact on several occasions, what a user has perceived to be a bug has simply been a misunderstanding of how to use a particular system function. There have been instances where someone has mentioned a problem, only for another Champion to intervene and explain how to resolve it.

5.6 Knowledge House Closure Having successfully negotiated the reported user concerns, launched KHIS 2.0 and addressed the technical issues, the trial with ONE was now ready to belatedly begin. Unfortunately, as part of a wider review, an appraisal of the Knowledge House service was undertaken by the Unis4NE Board in December 2009. A strategic decision was taken to discontinue the KH brand. However, the core activity of fielding and circulating enquiries (via KHIS) was to be absorbed into Unis4NE. Due to an internal consultation process, this decision did not enter the public domain until March 2010. A consequence was the discontinuation of the partnership between KH and ONE, which initiated the search for another trial partner.

5.7 A Third Trial Partner – MJ Associates As part of the re-profiling KH Business Development Director, Mark Jackson, left the organisation in April 2010 and successfully established his own specialist project consultancy business – MJ Associates. As one of the founders of KHIS, Mark recognised the potential value of the system to his business and he agreed to become the new trial partner. He undertook to: 1. Use KHIS to manage his address book of contacts 2. See whether KHIS could help him manage the process of establishing his new company – the thinking being that he could use the system’s diary-like functionality to help him manage his “business start-up checklist” 3. Use KHIS to manage his projects and collaborate with his clients; clients could be granted access to their own projects with KHIS being used as a workspace to track project progress and manage related communications, documents, etc. The results of the trial are reported in 7.1. 10

trac.edgewall.org

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Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

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Knowledge House Trial

5.8 KHIS Champions Evaluation In anticipation of the impending closure of KH and the fact that the trial with Mark would only last several months, it was decided to utilise the KHIS Champions and key university users to elicit opinions on the current version of KHIS 2.0 and its potential for future growth. A short questionnaire was designed to capture initial thoughts on:    

How/why KHIS is used institution-wide How KHIS is used to assist individuals with their day-to-day duties The unique features of KHIS Potential improvements to the system

As part of the June 2010 Champions meeting a session was dedicated to exploring the results in detail with a view to preparing a formal plan of action. The outcome of this exercise is discussed in 7.2.

5.9 Open Source Study In order to assess the potential for releasing KHIS as OS, KH utilised its strong links with the Centre for Internet Technologies. CIT produced a research paper investigating the current affairs of OS, using case studies to elicit key issues. The findings were applied to the context of KHIS and conclusions drawn. The paper is included as an annex to this report and the conclusions discussed in 7.3.

6 Methodology Compared to the other trials in the ‘Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE’ project, the KH trial is perhaps unique. Whereas other trials were focused on assessing different software packages to meet a specific purpose, KH attempted to customise a specific piece of software for different purposes. As described in greater detail in B.4, KHIS 2.0 was designed specifically to address several problems with KHIS 1.5:     

KHIS 1.5 did not follow a recognised design pattern and was extremely difficult to maintain System logic and presentation of data were tightly coupled Data security and integrity were handled at code-level Inconsistent user interface No audit trail of transactions

With these problems in mind, four key requirements emerged during the design of KHIS 2.0: 1 2 3 4

Security Extensibility Customisability Robustness

It was envisaged that if these requirements were met KHIS could be adapted for use outside of the original remit of the North East universities, which of course was the focus of this project.

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Knowledge House Trial

6.1 KHIS Database Design To best enable rapid extensibility and customisability, the decision was taken to move away from the traditional relational database model of KHIS 1.5 and instead utilise a hybrid Entity-Attribute-Value (EAV) model. As noted by Nadkarni, P. (2010) the EAV model is accepted as being less efficient and with weak typing constraints. Significantly, however, it offers the advantage of being extremely flexible, allowing the rapid implementation of new data fields without the need to modify code. By way of comparison, consider the following example: A Sunderland user needs to record an internal reference code against all new projects. In KHIS 1.5, this request would take a full day to implement; the database would have to be modified, and all underlying code and reports adjusted and tested. In KHIS 2.0, the same request would only take 10 minutes to implement; the new field could be inserted into the database as a project attribute, added to display templates, then everything would simply work. The KHIS EAV model also allows finer grained security and auditing, which addresses the security concerns of KHIS 1.5. A strict design rule is that the application framework must never access the database directly. Instead stored procedures are employed and the ID of the logged in user is passed into every one. 

Security – the user ID is checked against security tables to ensure that only data the user has explicit permission to see is returned. This addresses the problem in KHIS 1.5 with security being handled at code level.



Auditing – Insert/update/delete operations are logged with the user ID in audit tables so developers never need to worry about handling audit operations. This addresses the absence of auditing in KHIS 1.5.

6.2 KHIS Application Design The KHIS 2.0 application framework is based upon the Model-View-Controller (MVC) paradigm. The major advantage MVC is the separation of data access, functionality and presentation, Kotek, B. (2002). This addresses the KHIS 1.5 problem of tight interconnections between logic and presentation. The framework is robust and allows rapid customisation with minimal coding effort. The modular nature of MVC also means that additional functionality can be implemented without fear of “breaking” the whole application, which was not the case with KHIS 1.5.

7 Outputs 7.1 MJ Associates Trial 7.1.1 KHIS Trial System KHIS 2.0 was designed to handle multiple accounts, with the underlying security model making it possible to hide data belonging to a specific account from all other accounts. It is also possible to customise an account’s user interface without affecting others. However, given the nature of the trial, a separate blank version was established so that if any problems were discovered the core system users would not be affected.

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7.1.2

Objective 1 – Address Book Management

In KHIS, projects “belong” to organisations. Before a new enquiry (i.e. project) is logged, if the client’s organisation is not already registered in the system, it must first be created. Similarly, project team members are derived from the contacts database. So, before a client or academic can be assigned as a project member, a contact record must first be created if it does not already exist.

Organisation

Contact

Project

Figure 1 KHIS entity relationships

Before Mark could create any new projects, he needed to transfer his contacts from Outlook into the system. He noted the following points: 7.1.2.1 Pros  Able to save all contacts in KHIS  Liked how, once created, it was possible to export contacts/organisations to Excel as this is useful for mail merges, etc.

Figure 2 Contacts list

7.1.2.2 Cons  Before contacts could be created, it was first necessary to create organisations  Might be better if it was possible to create contacts independently of organisations, to mirror a simple email address book  Process too slow when need to create multiple contacts  Need to be able to bulk import – potentially from Outlook, Excel or vCards  Some of the organisation fields were not relevant – e.g. SIC code, organisation type, company registration number, turnover  Some of the contact fields were not relevant – e.g. source of expertise flag, date of birth, date started, keywords, biography, qualifications, memberships

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7.1.2.3 Recommendations  

Add bulk contact/organisation import functionality to KHIS Remove unnecessary organisation/contact fields to simplify the display forms

7.1.3

Objective 2 – Task List Management

In KHIS it is possible to create action lists against projects and then assign those actions to one or more users. When a user logs into the system, they are presented with a list of outstanding actions. It is also possible to save email correspondence in KHIS by simply including the project reference in email messages. For example, suppose a project has a reference of 10-1234, and the project manager writes an email to the client asking for clarification of something; by including 101234@khis-system.net in the “CC” field that email will be automatically captured by KHIS and saved against the project. In fact it is common practice when project team members exchange emails to always CC the project reference – this way a complete audit trail is maintained and users from other teams are able to track previous conversations which may be relevant to their work. KHIS also includes a repository allowing documents to be uploaded into a project workspace. To help with the start up of MJ Associates, Mark devised a simple checklist of activities he needed to perform. In KHIS, he created a new project entitled “Company start up” and then added a new action for each item in his list.

Figure 3 Company start-up action list

He noted the following points: 7.1.3.1 Pros  Able to create new actions  Able to tick off actions as they were completed  Able to utilise the project email store in KHIS – many of the tasks involved email exchanges; was able to “CC” project to ensure all email correspondence was stored in the system for reference (see Figure 4)  Able to utilise the project document store in KHIS – many of the tasks involved producing documents and was able to save these documents into the project workspace (see Figure 5)

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 Very good how email attachments are automatically saved in the document store; saves double upload of documents

Figure 4 Project emails

Figure 5 Project documents

7.1.3.2 Cons  Found a paper list to be far more convenient as do not spend much of the day in office sat in front of a PC; if KHIS was accessible via iPhone it would be easy to maintain actions  Took long time to enter multiple actions as can’t touch type  More/customisable action types needed – currently restricted to only the following: write report; follow up; arrange meeting, send information, respond to enquiry, raise invoice  No real-time spellchecker in KHIS so needed to type list into Word first then cut and paste  Difficult to maintain in tandem with a written list; if actions could be synched with Outlook it would be possible as Outlook is accessible via iPhone so task list could be maintained in Outlook then synched with KHIS when convenient  Would have been good to attach documents to specific actions, rather than to the project 7.1.3.3 Recommendations    

Develop a version of KHIS for mobile applications Support import/export of task lists from Outlook Improve spellchecker in KHIS [KHIS does have a spellchecker but the user needs to physically click an icon to initiate it] Allow documents to be linked to actions 16 of 53

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7.1.4

Objective 3 – Project Management

In KHIS, nine distinct project types are defined to meet the requirements of the universities. Due to the architecture of KHIS 2.0, it is possible to easily add a new project type in minutes. However, there is no interface within KHIS to do this; instead, the KHIS development team manually maintain the list to ensure its integrity remains intact. Figure 6 University project types

As the nine university project types were not relevant to Mark, five new project types were created to match his requirements. At this point, it was realised that project types are not account-specific. I.e. had the trial system not been independent from the main system, 14 project types would have been visible to both university users and Mark. This is clearly not suited to a platform with potentially many separate accounts, and was noted as a future development task.

Figure 7 MJ Associates project types

Unfortunately, Mark was unable to use KHIS to log client’s projects. This was due to the time taken to complete the activities outlined in his company start-up checklist (many of which were dependent upon the actions of others) and the fact his first contracts did not begin until late June. However, in order to validate the effectiveness of KHIS as a project management tool for an SME, Mark created several dummy projects and noted his observations. 7.1.4.1 Pros  Able to create projects  Able to add clients as project team members

Figure 8 Dummy project

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Figure 9 Project team

7.1.4.2 Cons  Some project fields not relevant – i.e. primary university, source, agency, HEBCIS return eligible  Unable to create user accounts for clients – therefore couldn’t give clients access to project workspace and unable to test  Some project team roles university-specific – e.g. Academic Principal Investigator  Need to be able to add/edit project types  Also need to be able to define project status points for specific project types  Project circulation option not relevant to needs 7.1.4.3 Recommendations   

Develop simple user management interface/wizards allowing creation of user accounts Develop project type/status administration interface Need to have non-university specific project team roles (and an interface to maintain them)

7.1.5 Other Observations Aside from using KHIS to meet the three primary objectives, Mark also experimented with other areas of the system and noted the following pros and cons. 7.1.5.1 Pros  Collection functionality is potentially useful for marketing/event lists  Quick search very useful 7.1.5.2 Cons  Reporting options somewhat limited compared to KHIS 1.5 – dynamic and flexible reports were major feature of KHIS 1.5  User manual was out-of-date in places – specifically in terms of screen shots 7.1.5.3 Recommendations  

Up-to-date training manual is essential, perhaps even video tutorials/walkthroughs of the core system functions – if people do not understand the system or find it too complex, they simply won’t use it Flexible reporting is crucial

7.1.6 KHIS Roadmap A KHIS Roadmap was produced to formalise the results of the trial. The roadmap enumerates all of Mark’s recommendations and assesses the level of effort involved in implementing them. For reference, the KHIS Roadmap is included as an annex to this report.

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7.2 KHIS Champions Evaluation Completed questionnaires were received from key users at Durham, Northumbria and Sunderland, and can be found in D.1. A half-hour slot was scheduled to expand upon the results during the June 2010 Champions meeting. However, the level of interest was such that the discussion lasted almost two hours, resulting in some excellent ideas to take KHIS forward. Instead of using a whiteboard, thoughts were captured via a PC, projected onto a large screen. This method was preferable as it enabled an initial brainstorm of ideas, which could then be cut and pasted to fit into themes. The output from the discussion can be found in D.2, with an analysis of the results below. 7.2.1 Institutional Benefits KHIS is primarily used by the universities’ business development teams to manage consultancy activities. It was agreed that KHIS offers two key institutional benefits: 1. Information sharing – information relating to companies, clients and projects is held in one central repository and accessible to different teams at different sites. Users can consult KHIS for historical data relating to a particular company or contact; this helps the universities work together collaboratively, rather than competitively, and ensures that teams do not “step on each other’s toes”. 2. Business opportunities – if a particular university receives an enquiry which they are unable to handle, rather than simply tell the client “no”, they can use KHIS to rapidly refer the opportunity to other universities who might be able to take the work on. 7.2.2 Personal Benefits The questionnaire results show that people use different aspects of KHIS to help them with their day-to-day duties. However, some functionality is generally used by all:    

Circulation of new enquiries Action lists – to manage/allocate tasks within teams Email repository – email correspondence relating to a project is always copied to that project Searches – to look up historical data relating to projects, companies and clients

Action lists, in particular, are heavily used within teams to not only ensure that work is completed on time, but also to allow users to keep abreast of what colleagues are working on. Therefore, KHIS encourages collaboration within teams, as well as between different teams. It is also interesting to note that, although team members individually use specific aspects of KHIS to help them perform their duties, collectively the team uses the majority of the functionality the system offers. For example, one Sunderland user is responsible for handling enquiries and uses the circulation functionality; another is responsible for marketing and uses collections; another uses the reporting options, etc. The same trend can be seen within the Durham team.

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7.2.3 Unique Features of KHIS The above institutional and personal benefits highlight the main reasons why KHIS is unique. However, during the discussion, other features were considered, resulting in the following definitive list (ranked by order of importance): 1. Information sharing across/within universities via one central repository 2. Enquiry circulation to other teams 3. Cost – unlimited number of users for fixed annual fee + no charge for additional development work/support 4. All users gain from what a particular university wants from the system and enhancements are utilised by all 5. Conforms to thinking practices of universities – bespoke, adaptable, dynamic system as opposed to “fixed” off-the-shelf solutions 6. Ability to search for academic expertise across sites 7. Email repository 8. No restriction on what can be stored against a project, company or client – other CRMs have restrictions 7.2.4 Potential Improvements Whereas the data gathered from the first few questions merely illustrates why KHIS is such a unique and valuable platform, the responses to the question “do you think KHIS could be improved in any way” provoked much interest and discussion during the meeting. 7.2.4.1 Top Priorities Three high priority requirements were identified: 1. User administration interface KHIS 1.5 included a user administration interface which allowed nominated administrators from each university to manage accounts for their own institute. Due to the completely different architecture of KHIS 2.0, the fact that the system was only rolled out to a core set of users initially, and the effort involved in developing an admin interface, it was not considered an immediate priority. However, now that the system was established and the universities (particularly Durham and Sunderland) keen to roll the system out, this was identified as a priority. Mark also flagged this as a necessity during his trial, as he will need to create accounts for his clients so that they can access their projects (see 7.1.4). 2. Dynamic circulation lists KHIS only has a global circulation list at present, comprising key business development personnel from Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside. This list is maintained manually by Paul at KH. The Champions consider it very important that they have an interface to manage an independent list which they would use to circulate enquiries internally. For example, if Durham receives a consultancy enquiry, at present they simply send an internal email to academic staff with details of the opportunity pasted from KHIS. However, if those academics had KHIS user accounts, enquiries could be circulated via KHIS and responses captured by the system automatically. This could encourage more departments to use the system, thereby increasing its usefulness as a collaborative tool. Of course, were KHIS launched as a generic CRM/PRM system it would also be a requirement to have customisable circulation lists, to allow teams of users to circulate internal communications.

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3. Flexible reporting KHIS 2.0 allows all data (projects, companies, contacts, etc.) to be exported to Excel11 from which a plethora of reports can then be derived. The limitation at present is that data is not dynamically updated. For example, suppose a user needed to compile a report listing all ongoing projects. To do this, they would search KHIS for projects with a status other than “closed”, export the results to Excel, then within Excel customise the output to fit their requirements. However, if a month later they needed an updated copy of the report, they would again have to search KHIS for projects with a status other than “closed”, export the results to Excel, then customise the Excel output once again. Instead, there is a requirement to set up customised report parameters to allow up-to-date data to be pulled from KHIS at the click of a button. Flexible reporting was also identified by Mark during his trial as being a key requirement (see 7.1.5.3). 7.2.4.2 User Guide It was also considered important that comprehensive training material is produced describing how to use all features of KHIS. Since the initial KHIS 2.0 user manual was written by Lynnsey and Laura at KH in 2009, the system has undergone many refinements and enhancements and it has proved challenging keeping it up-to-date. Instead, an excellent suggestion was to use the wiki functionality of the KHIS bug reporting system. That way, users will always have access to the most up-to-date manual and, if they spot a mistake or feel something is not explained very well, they will be able to correct it themselves. This will also give users more of a sense of ownership. There is no doubt that a quality, easy-to-follow user guide will be essential if KHIS is ultimately launched as a generic CRM/PRM system; indeed a lot of software – particularly open source projects – utilise wikis to engage the user community. 7.2.5 KHIS Roadmap During discussions many other potential enhancements were put forward, ranging from simple (automatic reminder emails for overdue actions) to complex (integration with other systems such as Outlook and iCalendar). To formalise the results of the exercise, all of the suggestions were added to the KHIS Roadmap (see 7.1.6).

7.3 Open Source Study The study revealed five key criteria to consider when evaluating the merits of OS: cost, maintenance, support, training and security. Applying the criteria to the context of KHIS, the key issues to emerge were: 7.3.1 Pros  The architecture of KHIS is such that it can be rapidly customised and extended, thereby making it extremely approachable to external developers  A training wiki, version control system and bug reporting system are already established and could be opened up to an OS community  A vanilla version of KHIS could be released to the OS community  KHIS was developed using proprietary software (Adobe ColdFusion and Microsoft SQL Server) which incur licensing costs; however OS alternatives exist for both (Railo Open Source and MySQL)

Mindful of data projection, only users with explicit permission (via a security role) are able to export data from KHIS

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7.3.2 Cons  Agreement would be needed from all five North East universities before KHIS could be released as OS  Technical and user knowledge of KHIS is limited to a small subset of people who are occupied by day-to-day duties; releasing an OS version of KHIS would require a significant initial investment of time from these people  KHIS was developed using proprietary software which incur licensing costs For reference, the full research paper – “An Investigation into the Open Source Potential of the Knowledge House Information System” – is included as an annex to this report.

7.4 The KHIS Platform KHIS 2.012 The most tangible output from the trial is a new, stable, robust version of KHIS. The system is now being used extensively by Durham and Sunderland and, to lesser degrees, Northumbria, Newcastle and Teesside. JISC Test System13 Separate installation of KHIS 2.0 specifically for the trial with MJ Associates. KHIS 1.5 Archive14 In tandem to KHIS 2.0, KHIS 1.5 remains available online for legacy purposes, although it is now read-only. It is anticipated that the archive site will remain online for at least another year. Ticket System15 The ticket system remains as an online tool for KHIS users to formally record problems and log feature requests. User Manual The user manual was developed as a Microsoft Word document. However, as a result of the evaluation exercise undertaken by the KHIS Champions, this will be transferred to a wiki beyond the end of the trial project (see 7.2.4.2).



   

7.5 IPR No IPR issues exist which prevent the outputs of the project from being made available to the teaching, learning and research communities.

12 13 14 15

www.khis-system.net www.khis-demo.net www.khis-archive.net support.khis-system.net/trac/KHISSystem

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8 Sustainability Despite the closure of KH, KHIS will continue to be used by Unis4NE to manage collaborative activities between its member universities. Development of KHIS will continue as per the priorities identified from the trial with MJ Associates and the KHIS Champions Evaluation exercise. As described in the KHIS Roadmap, the top priorities are:   

Development of a KHIS user administration interface Extended project circulation lists Dynamic reporting

The KHIS Champions questionnaires (see D.1) show that both Durham and Sunderland are keen to roll the system out to other units, departments and faculties with a view to adopting the system as an institute-wide solution. It is anticipated that once the above three features have been implemented a phased rollout will begin later in 2010. The OS feasibility study verified the potential to release a vanilla version of KHIS. Unis4NE are keen to further explore this avenue and is looking to secure funding from various streams to support it. Other anticipated activities include developing a mobile app version of the system (a requirement identified by Mark as part of his trial) and developing adapters to allow integration of KHIS with other systems (including Teesside and Newcastle’s CRM systems). Both are documented in the KHIS Roadmap but are reliant upon securing appropriate funding due to the workload of current staff. Due to the restructuring of Unis4NE following the closure of KH, it is envisaged that funding applications will be lead by member universities on behalf of the consortium, with endorsement from Unis4NE16. Sunderland, in particular, is very keen to explore such opportunities. As part of another JISC-funded project analysing customer/project relationship management processes, KHIS is currently being evaluated by several regional initiatives including the Institute for Local Governance (ILG). ILG is a pioneering research and knowledge exchange venture designed to maximise the benefits of collaboration between the region's universities and wider public realm. ILG is keen to adopt the system to manage collaborative activities and is exploring this avenue with Unis4NE.

This is not a new business model for Unis4NE as several of its previous and existing programmes are implemented in this way. The discontinuation of the KH brand was effectively only a branding exercise with most of its services formerly delivered under this brand being absorbed into Unis4NE activities.

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9 Outcomes 9.1 Overall Aim The overall aim of the project was to determine whether KHIS could be adapted for use outside of the HE sector; the anticipated key output being a separate version of KHIS, customised as per the requirements of the trial partner. Due to the various problems reported, and specifically the trial with MJ Associates not starting until the closing months of the project, many of the identified requirements were not implemented. However, all have been documented and scheduled for future development, including the high priority development of a user administration interface. Nevertheless, as a result of the work undertaken during the project, as it currently stands KHIS 2.0 is stable, robust and in active use. The problems and requirements identified during the trial will enable the system to grow beyond the end of the project and Unis4NE is keen to seek further funding opportunities to develop a spinout version of the system for non-HE use.

9.2 Objectives v Outcomes Given the loss of two trial partners and technical problems, although the primary objectives remained much the same, the planned sequence of events changed somewhat. The following table summarises the key objectives and whether/how they were met. Objective Elicit requirements from FPFP

Document the customisation required in order for KHIS to meet the user requirements Implement the user requirements

Test the changes

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Outcome  Requirements were not gathered from FPFP due to their early withdrawal from project  Requirements were successfully gathered from the new trial partner, ONE  Having replaced FPFP and ONE as the trial partner, high level requirements were gathered from MJ Associates  Following consideration of the ONE requirements, a Technical Specification was produced (see Appendix E)  As the purpose of the trial with MJ Associates was to attempt to use KHIS as-is and then document required changes, a Technical Specification was not produced; instead required changes were formalised and described in the KHIS Roadmap  Following the launch of KHIS 2.0 the key customisations requested by ONE were successfully implemented  The limited customisation requested by MJ Associates (i.e. different project types and status points) was successfully implemented  Over the duration of the trial additional requirements emerged from the main KHIS users within the universities via onsite visits, KHIS Champions meetings and the ticket system; as reported the key technical problems were successfully addressed and development of additional functionality continues beyond the end of the project  Due to the closure of KH and discontinuation of the partnership with ONE, ONE users were unable to test the customised system  Mark successfully used KHIS for his trial; problems and additional requirements were formally documented in the KHIS Roadmap  A test system was established for the key university users of KHIS  Although some institutes were more active than others due to different strategic goals, the users successfully used the test system to test bug fixes and additional functionality  The test system remains active and bug fixes/new functionality is www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk

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Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

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Knowledge House Trial

Produce supporting training material

   

Train users how to use KHIS 2.0



Elicit feedback from the users and implement necessary changes/fixes

  

always deployed to the test system before going live As part of the trial, a Word-based user guide was produced by the KH Central users A supporting online test system with dummy data was established to allow users to experiment without fear of causing problems Due to the constant evolution of KHIS 2.0, over the duration of the trial the user guide dated somewhat Work is now afoot to transfer the user guide to a wiki; once in a suitable configuration, KHIS Champions will be granted edit rights to allow them to contribute content The KHIS Champions forum was successfully used to train key site users; further site visits are planned later in the year to follow up on any outstanding issues and problems Mark successfully identified required changes to the system as part of his trial The KHIS Champions Evaluation exercise elicited additional key requirements As a result of the above points, a KHIS Roadmap was produced to evaluate and prioritise all additional requirements Implementation of the requirements is an ongoing exercise A research paper was written to investigate the key issues surrounding OS

 Identify the criterion that  makes software a likely candidate for release as OS Use the above criterion to  As part of the above research study the identified criteria was evaluate the likely applied to the context of KHIS; both positives and potential candidature of KHIS as an negatives were identified with regards to releasing KHIS as OS OS platform Evaluate whether the trial  See sections 7 through 11 of this report was successful and document lessons learned Table 1 Objectives v Outcomes

9.3 Impact on Stakeholders The key stakeholders in the project were the five North East universities. The extensive development work undertaken over the duration of the project has resulted in a stable, flexible and robust system which is now being actively used by the universities. The initial reluctance of the sites to change over from KHIS 1.5 to 2.0 was tackled by engaging the users via the KHIS Champions forum, site visits and one-to-one meetings. As users saw problems being addressed, confidence and buy-in into the new system grew. Although KHIS 1.5 remains live as a read-only archive site, records show that this system is rarely accessed as all data was imported into KHIS 2.0 (although archived, it is still accessible). In the closing months of the project, in order to give each site more of a sense of ownership, custom skins were created. Due to the design of the system this was easy to implement. Several of the KHIS Champions believe that people are more likely to use KHIS if they see it is branded in their own institute’s colours, with Sunderland and Durham now particularly keen to roll the system out to other users. It is anticipated this rollout will begin later in the year, upon completion of the three top priorities identified in the KHIS Roadmap – i.e. user admin interface, dynamic circulation lists and flexible reporting.

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Figure 10 Durham University KHIS skin

The other stakeholders identified in the Project Initiation Document were FPFP, Enigma Interactive and JISC. FPFP and Enigma are no longer stakeholders â&#x20AC;&#x201C; FPFP as they withdrew from the project and Enigma as the money budgeted for Stephen Moretti was reallocated to secure Paul due to the staffing issues reported in 5.2. FPFP were replaced by MJ Associates, who can now be considered a stakeholder. As one of the founders of KHIS, Mark Jackson is extremely keen to exploit the potential of the system. He continues to work with Unis4NE in search of funding opportunities to develop a version of the system for commercial use. With regards to JISC, the lessons learned during the project hopefully informed the objectives of the Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE project as a whole. Now that the new version of KHIS established, Unis4NE is keen to develop the system further and continues to monitor opportunities to work with JISC in the future.

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10 Lessons Learned 10.1

Loss of Trial Partners

Losing several trial partners clearly impacted upon the project as it left little time to conduct the trial with MJ Associates. Although both FPFP and ONE left for valid reasons, perhaps one or two mechanisms could be employed to safeguard against, or at least limit the impact of, partners withdrawing. Firstly, a formalised contract could be agreed between all partners prior to the commencement of the project, stipulating procedures and penalties for withdrawing. Of course, this would depend upon the type of project, funding body, nature of contractors, etc. Secondly, money could be budgeted to pay trial users for taking part, thereby providing extra incentive.

10.2

Staffing

The main staffing issue to affect the project (maternity leave) was successfully negotiated due to stringent pre-project planning. KH identified “substitutes” for key project staff with appropriate skill sets and budgeted for their participation in the project in supporting roles. Of course, due to the other staffing issue (VAT) the services of one of the consultants, Stephen Moretti, were not used. However, when Rachel fell pregnant, Paul seamlessly stepped into the role following a one month handover period. Of course, the downside was the reduction of the core development team from two to one. The subsequent support Kevin Ginty provided to Paul in Rachel’s absence proved to be invaluable and ensured technical problems were given full consideration before the appropriate solution implemented. A lesson, therefore, is that it is always best to ensure development staff are not isolated.

10.3

Resistance to Change

The most significant delaying factor in the project was undoubtedly the late release of KHIS 2.0 to the five North East universities. The reluctance of key users to change over from the established KHIS 1.5 played a major role in the delay. As one of the KHIS Champions questionnaires reveals (see D.1), “at the start of KHIS 2.0 development there was a lack of clarity on aims and objectives”. Therefore, having identified all stakeholders a change will affect, a clear lesson is to make them fully aware of the change in advance to elicit opinions. Once key stakeholders are onboard it will be much easier to introduce and manage a change. The monthly KHIS Champions meetings provided an excellent forum in which to discuss concerns and promote the many benefits of the new system. This gave users a real sense of ownership and allowed the development team to demonstrate that problems were being actively addressed.

10.4

Other Projects

At the same time as the trial, KH were involved in another JISC-funded project which analysed customer/project relationship management processes; the aim being to identify best practice in the selection and deployment of such systems. The processes followed in this project have been particularly useful in determining which aspects of CRM/PRM functionality are vital to the successful deployment of new systems and ensuring user buy-in and engagement when launched. Had the results of this project been available earlier, no doubt some of the problems encountered when launching KHIS 2.0 could have been avoided or at least better predicted/handled.

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10.5

Technical Issues

10.5.1 Lack of Technical Documentation As reported in B.4 the team that designed KHIS 2.0 left KH before the start of the trial project. One problem experienced by the current development team is that some aspects of the system were not documented in great detail. Whereas this would not be problematic for an off-the-shelf solution as generic documentation would be readily available, KHIS is a bespoke system. When developing new functionality, effort was slowed somewhat by the need to first of all gain an understanding of the overall system architecture. To address this, extensive use has been made of the supporting system wiki to document the architecture of the system and design decisions. Access is restricted to the development team but this resource will hopefully prove to be an invaluable source of reference for other developers. 10.5.2 Poor Performance The poor initial performance of KHIS 2.0 has been reported as being largely down to the volume of data imported from KHIS 1.5 when the system was launched. When piloting a new or upgraded system, a lesson here is to run extensive tests against the entire dataset to ensure problems can be addressed before the system is launched. If problems emerge, consider archiving old data. 10.5.3 Data Protection 10.5.3.1 KHIS 1.5-specific Problems As stated in B.4 several problems with KHIS 1.5 were related to shared data and how it was accessed and managed by users. For example, users could delete data but the lack of auditing meant culprits could not be traced. In KHIS 2.0 these problems were addressed by:  Building intrinsic auditing into the database  Replacing “delete” functionality with “audit” functionality – it is not possible to delete any data from the system; instead it is archived and will not be included by default in search results (although this can be overridden)  Applying permissions to ensure only owners/certified users can edit/archive data 10.5.3.2 Data Exports Discussions during KHIS Champions Meetings revealed another data protection concern – it is possible to export contacts, organisations and projects from the system to Excel. To counter this, three measures were implemented:   

Security roles were created (CAN_EXPORT_CONTACTS, CAN_EXPORT_ORGS, etc.) and only users with explicit permission are able to export data When a user clicks “export” a disclaimer is shown and the user prompted to confirm acknowledgement before the data is exported All data exports are logged

10.5.3.3 Restrict Mailing Flags All organisation and contact records include a “restrict marketing mail” flag to denote whether the company/contact has opted in to receiving marketing communications. By default, the flag is set to “true” (i.e. do not send marketing communications) in line with data protection legislation. This flag is included in all Excel data exports to allow users to filter only those companies/contacts who wish to receive such communications.

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10.6

Collaborative Support Wiki

Over the duration of the project, the KHIS support wiki/ticket system has emerged as an extremely valuable tool for several reasons:  

Users are able to submit formal bug reports and feature requests and track progress System developers can document the system architecture and design decisions for future reference The integrated version control system allows code updates to be managed, documented and linked to bug reports Once transferred from Word (post-project) the KHIS User Guide will represent a comprehensive, always up-to-date, online resource for the KHIS community; users will be able to contribute content themselves giving an increased sense of ownership

 

As a consequence, a wiki is recommended as a support tool and will encourage buy in from users and collaboration with developers.

10.7

Top Ten Tips

Secure the commitment of trial partners via a formal contract or incentives (e.g. financial, free use of system post-trial)

Identify substitute staff with similar skill sets for key project personnel to counter staff leaving

Discuss significant technical issues with colleague(s) wherever possible to ensure the best solution is implemented

When implementing a new collaborative system, identify all stakeholders in advance and gauge opinions before implementation commences

Utilise face-to-face meetings with groups of users as much as possible through the entire project lifecycle to ensure buy-in

Consider the outputs from other projects to help achieve aims and objectives

Thoroughly document the system architecture and the rationale behind major design decisions for the reference of other developers

Data protection is an essential consideration in collaborative systems; measures such as auditing and explicit user permissions must be employed to control access to data

When trialling a new system, test against the entire dataset rather than a subset to verify the robustness of the system

10 Consider the use of a wiki/ticket system to encourage collaboration between developers and users

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Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

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Knowledge House Trial

11 Conclusions To conclude, the overall project objective has been met – i.e. to validate whether KHIS could be adapted for use outside of the HE sector – despite several significant unforeseen events befalling the project. Although losing several trial partners was an undoubted blow, the fact that replacements were swiftly found after each withdrawal is testament to the depth of the KH network. The loss of Project Manager, Rachel Armstrong, on maternity leave was cushioned by pre-emptively identifying “substitutes” to key project personnel prior to the project commencing. The KHIS Champions forum proved to be invaluable in addressing the technical issues associated with the launch of KHIS 2.0 as the development team was able to discuss and prioritise concerns with the core system users and gain their confidence. It was during this forum that the archiving strategy to tackle the speed issue was formulated, for example. As it stands, KHIS has been successfully upgraded and is now being actively used by the North East universities to manage collaborative activities. Although the Knowledge House brand will cease to exist from August 2010, there is an overt commitment of the Unis4NE Board to continue to support network services of the kind delivered by KH and its supporting IT platform – i.e. KHIS. KHIS will be rebranded, with corporate coloured skins already rolled out to Durham, Northumbria and Sunderland users. It is envisaged that the system will be rolled out to further user groups within the universities over the coming months. Although the trial with ONE was not completed due to the closure of KH, KHIS was successfully customised to meet the key user requirements. The trial with MJ Associates identified additional functionality required to make KHIS a generic project management system suitable for use outside of the HE sector. Ideally, this functionality would have been fully implemented within the lifetime of the project; unfortunately, due to the aforementioned problems, this was not possible. However, the requirements were fully documented, evaluated and prioritised in the KHIS Roadmap. The KHIS Champions evaluation exercise identified further system requirements and these too are documented and prioritised in the Roadmap. KHIS 2.0 is now stable, robust and, pending implementation of the high priority requirements (user admin interface, dynamic circulation lists and flexible reporting), will be in a configuration that will allow the system to be adapted for use by non-HE organisations. Implementation of the three key requirements is currently ongoing with development work expected to be completed later in 2010. The OS study uncovered both positives and potential pitfalls in releasing an OS version of KHIS. The greatest positive being the architecture of the system is such that it can be rapidly customised and extended by external developers; the greatest pitfalls being cost and the necessary initial time investment from key KHIS personnel. In working together, the project team has been able to expose KHIS to various JISC initiatives and is keen to explore further opportunities to develop a commercial (potentially OS) version of the system, with the full support of Unis4NE.

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12 Implications and Recommendations The KHIS Roadmap documents the additional development work required to further the uptake of KHIS. Some are generic requirements that are applicable to all potential variants of the system; some to the current university version only; and some to potential commercial/OS versions. For example, a user administration interface, dynamic reporting, training suite and diary integration would benefit everyone. Interfaces into Newcastle and Teesside’s CRM systems are clearly only applicable to the current installation of KHIS, whereas a mobile version would only be required by future adaptations of the system. The Open Source Study (see 5.9) determined that a lack of open standards for mobile devices would complicate the development of a mobile version of KHIS. Therefore, the development of a mobile version of the system is recommended as a potential future standalone project. The same study discussed the potential growth of SaaS and recommended a comprehensive study be undertaken into releasing KHIS as SaaS. Again, this represents a potential future project. Pending implementation of the high priority requirements in the KHIS Roadmap, the system would then be in a position to be adapted into a vanilla version (by removing the university-specific customisations). This vanilla version would then form the platform from which mobile, commercial, OS and SaaS versions of the system could be developed. Each adaptation is proposed as a separate project.

13 References 13.1 

Papers

OECD (2007) Regional Engagement: The Future for Higher Education? Programme on Institutional Management in Higher Education (IMHE) Info, April 2007

13.2

Websites



Kotek, B. (2002) MVC Design Pattern Brings About Better Organisation and Code Reuse. Retrieved 15th June 2010 from: articles.techrepublic.com.com/5100-10878_11-1049862.html



Prakash, N. (2010) The EAV/CR Data Model. Retrieved 15th June 2010 from: ycmi.med.yale.edu/nadkarni/eav_cr_frame.htm

13.3     

Supporting Websites

Knowledge House project blog Knowledge House Knowledge House Twitter Universities for the North East Centre for Internet Technologies

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knowledgekhis.wordpress.com www.knowledgehouse.ac.uk twitter.com/KHouseUK www.unis4ne.ac.uk www.cit.sunderland.ac.uk

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Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

14 Dissemination Summary 14.1

Online Publicity

The principle source of dissemination was a project blog. Hosted by JISC, the blog was used to communicate project milestones and general KHIS-related news and views. Details of the project were included on the public-facing Knowledge House and Centre for Internet Technologies websites. Updates were also broadcast via the Knowledge House Twitter account (see 13.3 above). The Open Source Study (see 5.9) was released via the CIT website as a whitepaper on OS deployment.17

14.2

JISC Events

Aside from internal cluster and interim meetings as part of the overall â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; project, the trial was discussed at several other JISC-sponsored events including: Date 1/12/2009 2/12/2009 29/4/2010

Event Change Management Workshop Project Management Workshop Supporting Professional Development for Engagement Workshop Table 2 JISC Events

The project results will also be presented at the final showcase event in York which takes place on 24th September 2010.

14.3

Other Events

Date 4/3/2009 6/3/2009 12/3/2009 17/3/2009 27/3/2009 5/6/2009 2/7/2009 6/7/2009 7/7/2009 16/9/2009 27/10/2009 28/10/2009 12/11/2009 18/11/2009 19/11/2009 27/1/2010 16/2/2010 24/2/2010 3/3/2010 18/3/2010 24/3/2010

Event KHIS 2.0 demo at Northumbria University North East Higher Skills Network conference Northumbria Larder KHIS 2.0 demo Innovating for Growth event Design Network North (DNN) launch event Scotch on the Rocks conference Partners 4 Engineering event FAIM Conference at Teesside University KHIS 2.0 demo to Design Network North staff KHIS 2.0 soft issues meeting at University of Sunderland KHIS user testing meeting Network North Marketing event Art of Marketing event Internet Marketing event Science and Innovation conference Innovation event Meeting with Association of North East Councils (KHIS 2.0 and Mapping) ESRC Regional Knowledge Exchange event (Creative and Cultural Industries) Business Exchange Event Innovation Factory Business Support event #1 Innovation Factory Business Support event #2 Table 3 Other Dissemination Events

www.cit.sunderland.ac.uk/research/publication.cfm?id=83

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15 Glossary CIT

The Centre for Internet Technologies is a research and development group based at the University of Sunderland, with extensive experience of a broad range of internet technologies

ColdFusion

Proprietary web-scripting language based on standard HTML that is used to write dynamic web applications; KHIS is written in ColdFusion

EAV

Entity-Attribute-Value is a database model which is utilised by KHIS 2.0

FPFP

Food Processing Faraday Partnership is an independent supplier of services to help the food supply chain turn knowledge into business solutions; FPFP was the original trial partner

Knowledge House

KH Central

Knowledge House Central is the hub of the KH network; its staff handles enquiries from external companies, liaise with KH staff at each member university and maintain KHIS

KHIS

Knowledge House Information System

MVC

Model-View-Controller is an application framework; KHIS 2.0 is built upon this paradigm

OECD

Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development

ONE

ONE North East is the Regional Development Agency covering North East England; ONEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s Inward Investment Team was the second trial partner in the project

Open Source software

SaaS

Software as a Service is software that is deployed over the Internet and licensed to users as a service on demand

Unis4NE

Universities for the North East is the regional association of the five universities in North East England â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside

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Appendix A Project Personnel The key project personnel at the start of the project were: 

Rachel Armstrong – Senior KHIS Developer (Knowledge House) Rachel is responsible for the development and maintenance of all aspects of KHIS. Within the project, Rachel is Project Manager and lead analyst/developer.



Mark Jackson – Business Development Director (Knowledge House) Mark is responsible for the development and implementation of long term strategies for Knowledge House. Within the project, he will provide guidance and input where necessary.



Laura Major – Marketing and Projects Officer (Knowledge House) Laura works with Mark to deliver the marketing strategy for Knowledge House. Within the project, she will develop training material and train trial users



Paul Cranner – Senior Web Developer (Centre for Internet Technologies, University of Sunderland) Paul has a long standing relationship with Knowledge House and was responsible for upgrading KHIS from version 1.0 to 1.5. Within the project, he will work with Rachel to implement the customised version of KHIS.



Kevin Ginty – Technical Manager (Centre for Internet Technologies, University of Sunderland) Kevin has a long standing relationship with Knowledge House, in a technical advisory capacity. Within the project, he will provide technical guidance where necessary.



Stephen Moretti – Software Development Manager (Enigma Interactive) Stephen was previously employed as a KHIS Developer by Knowledge House and helped design and develop KHIS 2.0. Within the project, he will provide technical support to Rachel and Paul.

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Appendix B A Brief history of KHIS KHIS is a web-based collaborative CRM and project management tool. It supports the sharing of project and contact information across multiple teams, allowing them to be aware of other activities that may be related to their work. It is based on the KH model of collaborative business development activities across the five universities in North East England.

B.1 KHIS 1.0 KHIS was established in the late 1990s to provide a means of managing over 20 contracts simultaneously. The system was the brainchild of Mark Jackson, KH Business Development Director, who managed multiple live proposals and contacts at the time. It was noted that keeping paperbased action lists alive on up to 50 projects was too complex; if anyone had an assistant it was not practical to use email to keep them up-to-speed on multiple projects. Instead, what was needed was a single system to manage all contracts. The original system – KHIS 1.0 – was built around this vision. Initially it was quite small and intended for use by only a handful of users. The system was written by third party developers in ColdFusion with Microsoft Access as the backend database. As the profile and remit of Knowledge House grew, so did KHIS. A full time KHIS Developer was employed to manage and further expand the system and, over the next 5-6 years, it grew rapidly to meet increasing expectations. By 2005 there were over 700 active users and tens of thousands of projects, companies and contacts were stored in the system, along with a vast repository of documents, emails and reports. However, KHIS 1.0 was not designed handle so much data or to cater for so many users. It became clear that the system hardware and database were in need of an upgrade, as Microsoft Access is a desktop database that works best for individuals and small groups of users. Following the departure of the KHIS Developer for pastures new in late 2005, KH appointed an Interim Technical Manager to oversee a hardware and software upgrade. The organisation also utilised its strong university links by contracting Paul Cranner from the University of Sunderland’s Centre for Internet Technologies to implement the upgrade. CIT Technical Manager, Kevin Ginty, provided additional technical guidance.

B.2 KHIS Champions Group The KHIS Champions Group was formed at the same time, comprising KH Central staff, nominated representatives from each of the five North East universities, and Paul and Kevin. The group meets once a month to discuss all aspects of KHIS, ranging from technical problems and concerns to exploring potential new functionality. To this day, the regular monthly meeting remains.

B.3 KHIS 1.5 In early 2006 KHIS was successfully upgraded to version 1.5 with the more robust Microsoft SQL Server introduced as the storage solution. The system was also relocated onto faster, more secure servers. A new full time KHIS Developer was employed with CIT continuing to provide support on an ad-hoc basis.

B.4 KHIS 2.0 In 2007 a full time KHIS Technical Manager was appointed to work alongside the KHIS Developer. Between them, and with significant input from Mark Jackson, KHIS 2.0 was conceived. During discussions, several problems with KHIS 1.5 were identified: 

KHIS 1.5 grew organically and did not follow a recognised design pattern



System logic and presentation of data were tightly coupled; a developer needed an intricate understanding of the entire codebase in order to implement even a simple change

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

Concerns lingered regarding the data security model as it was implemented at code-level, and therefore entirely dependent upon the proficiency of the developer to maintain security



Similarly, data integrity was handled at the code-level and therefore again reliant upon the proficiency and knowledge of the developer



The user interface was inconsistent and difficult to navigate



System extensibility (i.e. adoption of KHIS for use for other purposes) was not possible as it was coded specifically for use in the HE sector, with logic embedded deep in the code



Database transactions were unaudited; there were instances of users deleting data from the system which could then not be traced back

With these problems in mind, four key considerations emerged during the design of KHIS 2.0: 1. Security – must be fundamental to the design and applicable to all aspects of the application, ensuring compliance with the Data Protection Act 2. Extensibility – the system must be flexible and open to extension by an external developer 3. Customisability – functionality and layout must be easy to customise without requiring an indepth knowledge of the system 4. Robustness – must use industry standard, modular design patterns to significantly reduce the learning curve for new developers It was envisaged that these considerations would allow the growth of KHIS outside the original remit of university business development, without compromising the service to existing users of the system. Following a requirements gathering and analysis process, development of KHIS 2.0 began later in 2007. (For reference, a detailed list of the general requirements that were identified during this process is included in Appendix C.) In parallel to the development of KHIS 2.0, support for KHIS 1.5 remained. Rachel Armstrong replaced the outgoing KHIS Developer later in the year and development of KHIS 2.0 gathered pace. In mid-2008 the KHIS Technical Manager departed for pastures new. As development of KHIS 2.0 was now advanced, rather than appoint a like-for-like replacement to oversee development, KH turned to CIT to provide more hands-on development effort. The initial version of KHIS 2.0 – featuring all core functionality of 1.5 – was scheduled for release to the five universities in mid-2009. At the same time, KHIS 1.5 was planned to be made into a readonly site, and kept live for legacy purposes. It was this initial version of KHIS 2.0 that would form the basis of the KH JISC trial.

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Appendix C General KHIS 2.0 Requirements The following general requirements were identified during the requirements gathering phase of KHIS 2.0. 1. Design and Documentation 1.1. The internal architecture of the application should follow recognised industry design patterns, where applicable. 1.2. Wherever possible, the design should be open to internal and/or external peer review. 1.3. Documentation should be maintained describing the detail of the design, and the reason this particular design was considered suitable. 1.4. The design should be portable, not relying on features of any specific RDBMS or application server. 1.5. Special consideration should be given to the security of the system, ensuring users can have confidence. A separate security review should be scheduled before completion of the project to ensure that all risk factors have been considered. 1.6. Training documentation should be produced. Targeted user groups should include: New users, power users, account administrators, and system integrators. 2. Data Security 2.1. Data security must be fundamental to the solution and should apply to all aspects of the application, including reporting. 2.2. Individual data entity instances should be securable; limiting read and write access to specified users or groups of users. 2.3. There should be a third access level permitting the knowledge of the existence and read access to unsecured data of any entity instance. This level should be encouraged as a default to allow maximal sharing of data. 2.4. It should be possible to configure any access rights to hide any knowledge of the existence of any entity instance from a group of users. 2.5. The security model should at least be a simple additive model, allowing rights to be built up from multiple group memberships. 2.6. An additive/subtractive model should also be considered, allowing data access to be specifically denied to specific users/groups. 2.7. An administrator should be able to set default values for their users that define the basic rights given to new entity instances. 2.8. Default access rights should be dependent on the account the user is logged in with. Changing their active account should load the defaults defined for that account. 3. Functional Security 3.1. Access to any functional area should be controllable, with users only being able to access the areas and actions that they are explicitly given access to â&#x20AC;&#x201C; e.g. access to financial details should be restricted to specified users. 3.2. Functional rights should be assignable using groups, permitting simpler management of rights. 3.3. Consider the modification of functional rights based on project role â&#x20AC;&#x201C; e.g. Project managers 37 of 53

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get access to financial information for only their projects. 4. Display Style 4.1. The application should be configurable to appear in a display style suitable for the user. 4.2. This style should be configurable for different partner sites. 4.3. It should be considered whether to allow individual users to configure their display style. 4.4. The display style should meet DDA requirements where practical. 4.5. Consideration should be given to display contrast and clarity. 4.6. Specific display styles for mobile devices should be considered. 4.7. Specific display styles for printing should be implemented. 5. Display Functionality 5.1. The intended platform is a web application requiring no installation at the client and ideally supporting a broad range of browsers. 5.2. Suggested browsers to fully support are IE6, IE7, Firefox 2, Safari (Apple) and Opera. 5.3. HTML output should conform to the W3C XHTML1.0 strict standard, where possible. 5.4. Generated HTML and images should be of reasonable size to ensure prompt page loading. 5.5. Use of AJAX should be considered for loading infrequently viewed or large content, without causing a full page reload. 5.6. Use of frames and iframes is discouraged, other than with a standard AJAX library. 6. Data Caching 6.1. No sensitive data should be cached on the local client. 6.2. Data on the entity of primary focus should be reloaded from the database upon every page load. 6.3. Data regarding related entities may be cached on the server for short periods for performance reasons. 6.4. Upon submission of data updates, data items should be checked to catch any interim updates and the update rejected if necessary. 6.5. Use of AJAX should be considered for loading infrequently viewed or large content, without requiring a full page reload. 7. Extensibility 7.1. The system should be flexible and open to extension by an external developer. 7.2. Any extensions should not be able to circumvent the core security of the data. 7.3. Extensibility should ideally require minimal specialist knowledge regarding the platform the system is implemented on. 7.4. Documentation should be maintained explaining to an external developer how to produce an extension to the system. 8. Reporting 8.1. Reporting users should have the same data security rules applied to them as application users.

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8.2. It should be possible to produce pre-defined reports from the web server. 8.3. The existing reporting system is Crystal Reports 10, including the web server module. This should be maintained for legacy purposes. 8.4. Other reporting platforms should be investigated. 9. Searches 9.1. A quick search will be offered at the top of every page. This will search all common fields of common entities for the specified text, reducing the dependence on any specific search screens. 9.2. Detailed search screens will be offered for each entity allowing more complicated searches on named attributes. 9.3. It should be possible to select multiple results from a search response and join these results to a temporary collection. 10. Platform 10.1. The existing hardware supports Microsoft Windows 2003 OS with a SQL Server 2005 database. This should be reused unless a strong case to use a more cost effective alternative can be made. 10.2. The existing application server is Adobe ColdFusion MX7. Other application servers may be considered but licensing and training costs must be favourable. 10.3. All third party libraries should have any licensing implications considered. 11. Capacity 11.1. The anticipated user base is of the order of ~1000, with concurrent users anticipated at a maximum of ~50. 11.2. The anticipated number of organisations stored in the system will be of the order of ~100,000. 11.3. The anticipated number of contacts stored in the system will be of the order of ~100,000. 11.4. The anticipated number of projects stored in the system will be of the order of ~100,000. 11.5. The anticipated number of communications stored in the system will be of the order of ~10,000,000, with the majority being of small data size.

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Appendix D KHIS Champions Feedback D.1 Completed Questionnaires

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Knowledge House Information System (KHIS)

User Questionnaire

1) Your name: 2) Your university:

Val Ely University of Sunderland

3) How is KHIS used within your university? I.e. within your own team and further afield across the whole institute

Enquiry management within Business Development team (i.e. projects, actions, activities plus upload of supporting documentation and emails) Marketing via Collections Recently rolled out to Careers and Employability Service staff (Business Bridge) with further training planned, with ‘key’ staff within Software City and Faculty of Business and Law. 4) How do you personally use KHIS to assist with your day-to-day duties? I.e. which features of the system do you regularly use?

See above + reporting (projects, financials).

5) What does KHIS let you do that you can’t do elsewhere? I.e. what makes the system unique?

Collections

6) Do you think KHIS could be improved in any way and, if so, how? E.g. new features, improvements to existing functionality

Admin tool allowing universities to create their own user accounts Reminder email when actions are overdue Redevelopment of Staff Key Skills tool

7) Any other comments System needs to adapt to the requirements of different user groups. System mainly used by Business Development staff that requires the same functionality, however this may not be true when rolled out to other services and faculties.

Thank you for completing this questionnaire! 41 of 53

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Knowledge House Information System (KHIS)

User Questionnaire

1) Your name: 2) Your university:

Hazel Juggins Northumbria University

3) How is KHIS used within your university? I.e. within your own team and further afield across the whole institute

KHIS is used by a 3 staff in the Research Business Innovation department.

4) How do you personally use KHIS to assist with your day-to-day duties? I.e. which features of the system do you regularly use?

 

Processing of circulated enquiries; Storing email correspondence by project;

5) What does KHIS let you do that you can’t do elsewhere? I.e. what makes the system unique?

 

Processing of circulated enquiries; Storing email correspondence by project;

6) Do you think KHIS could be improved in any way and, if so, how? E.g. new features, improvements to existing functionality



the functionality has improved considerably since implementation but the look and feel would benefit from some design/usability input;

7) Any other comments The user group has been a useful forum for sharing information and the development team have shown real commitment to understanding and meeting user needs. At the start of KHIS 2 development there was a lack of clarity on aims and objectives.

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Knowledge House Information System (KHIS)

User Questionnaire

1) Your name: 2) Your university:

Pamela Robinson Durham University

3) How is KHIS used within your university? I.e. within your own team and further afield across the whole institute

Within the business team, I am using KHIS for managing internal and business enquiries/projects relating to consultancy, analytical services, visits and R&D grant assessments. KHIS is not being used by any other department

4) How do you personally use KHIS to assist with your day-to-day duties? I.e. which features of the system do you regularly use?

Setting up new projects Forwarding emails to KHIS projects Searching for companies Searching for academics Checking progress of projects Searching by project number Exporting projects to excel and filter searching Financial reporting 5) What does KHIS let you do that you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do elsewhere? I.e. what makes the system unique?

I have not used any other project management systems before so have listed what I find useful. Storing emails with project Changing project status Easily check project details of another team member Access KHIS at any location in the world 6) Do you think KHIS could be improved in any way and, if so, how? E.g. new features, improvements to existing functionality

Export projects to excel for a named project owner

7) Any other comments

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Knowledge House Information System (KHIS)

User Questionnaire

1) Your name: 2) Your university:

Annisa Crich Durham University

3) How is KHIS used within your university? I.e. within your own team and further afield across the whole institute

Currently within our own team but we aim to roll out across the University.

4) How do you personally use KHIS to assist with your day-to-day duties? I.e. which features of the system do you regularly use?

Use KHIS to log enquiries, pull reports

5) What does KHIS let you do that you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do elsewhere? I.e. what makes the system unique?

Keeps all the project information in one place.

6) Do you think KHIS could be improved in any way and, if so, how? E.g. new features, improvements to existing functionality

7) Any other comments

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Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

Knowledge House Information System (KHIS)

User Questionnaire

1) Your name: 2) Your university:

Helen Warren Sunderland

3) How is KHIS used within your university? I.e. within your own team and further afield across the whole institute

Within our team and a handful of users external to the team (roll out is still ongoing).

4) How do you personally use KHIS to assist with your day-to-day duties? I.e. which features of the system do you regularly use?

Action Lists Project and company information records Collections Reports 5) What does KHIS let you do that you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do elsewhere? I.e. what makes the system unique?

Keeps all records relating to a project in one place.

6) Do you think KHIS could be improved in any way and, if so, how? E.g. new features, improvements to existing functionality

I think when the system is fully rolled out, there could be more reporting requirements that may emerge from the Faculties within the University.

7) Any other comments

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Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

Knowledge House Information System (KHIS)

User Questionnaire

1) Your name: 2) Your university:

Lynnsey Rayne Knowledge House/ UNIS4NE

3) How is KHIS used within your university? I.e. within your own team and further afield across the whole institute

KHIS is primarily used to circulate and chronologically order received enquiries, use of actions and communications to add circulated reminders, and to issue response reports to clients. It is also used to manage the enquiry process, from the start date, up to the point where ownership of projects is transferred to universities. 4) How do you personally use KHIS to assist with your day-to-day duties? I.e. which features of the system do you regularly use?

Circulation function, actions, communications, notes and emails, adding and amending enquiry, contact and organisation details. Printing and issuing response reports to clients.

5) What does KHIS let you do that you can’t do elsewhere? I.e. what makes the system unique?

Track a project completely from start to finish, update statuses and use annotations on different projects. Receive, collate and issue responses via in-built functionality. Send emails and reminders directly to users via the system

6) Do you think KHIS could be improved in any way and, if so, how? E.g. new features, improvements to existing functionality

Most improvements have already been discussed and have either been implemented or are on the development team “to do” lists. One thing I think KHIS would benefit from is an in-built FAQ/ training guide (much like the MS Office “Help” functionality) which would assist new and existing users. By making the guide part of the system it can be updated as soon as additional development and fixes have been completed and remain accurate for users. 7) Any other comments

Thank you for completing this questionnaire! 46 of 53

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Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

Knowledge House Information System (KHIS)

User Questionnaire

1) Your name: 2) Your university:

Mel Soulsby Sunderland

3) How is KHIS used within your university? I.e. within your own team and further afield across the whole institute

Within our team Business Development, 9 people plus others in various dept and faculties. We intend spread the use further now that the system is faster and more user friendly

4) How do you personally use KHIS to assist with your day-to-day duties? I.e. which features of the system do you regularly use?

Project and enquiry system used the most. Used on a regular day by day basis

5) What does KHIS let you do that you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do elsewhere? I.e. what makes the system unique?

Enquiry circulation, doc store particularly storing copy emails, email team members with reminders and info etc

6) Do you think KHIS could be improved in any way and, if so, how? E.g. new features, improvements to existing functionality

Improved speed of some of the functions

7) Any other comments KHIS 2 much improved lately particularly in speed of operation

Thank you for completing this questionnaire! 47 of 53

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Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

Knowledge House Information System (KHIS)

User Questionnaire

1) Your name: 2) Your university:

Jennifer Thompson Durham University

3) How is KHIS used within your university? I.e. within your own team and further afield across the whole institute

Used by Business Development Team (4 very active users, 1 less active) also intended to be used by Biological Sciences, can see potential to spread wider across the University

4) How do you personally use KHIS to assist with your day-to-day duties? I.e. which features of the system do you regularly use?

Find projects to check details when handling queries Regularly use general search box as don’t seem to be able to find resources through Search option on the bar Review project e-mail communications (posted to KHIS) Find all projects for a company or for an academic or department 5) What does KHIS let you do that you can’t do elsewhere? I.e. what makes the system unique?

Posting e-mails to KHIS, available over web so location independent, enquiry circulation option

6) Do you think KHIS could be improved in any way and, if so, how? E.g. new features, improvements to existing functionality

More comfortable reporting – standard reports would be helpful and self-build reports even better

7) Any other comments Very practical project management system

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Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

Knowledge House Information System (KHIS)

User Questionnaire

1) Your name: 2) Your university:

Peter Chalder-Wood Sunderland

3) How is KHIS used within your university? I.e. within your own team and further afield across the whole institute

Used as an enquiry management tool in the business development team, but not rolled out to faculties yet.

4) How do you personally use KHIS to assist with your day-to-day duties? I.e. which features of the system do you regularly use?

New enquiry, new company, search for contact details/existing company/project, storing relevant project e-mails via cc to project code xx-xxxxx@khis-system.net 5) What does KHIS let you do that you canâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t do elsewhere? I.e. what makes the system unique?

Sharing info and/or projects between separate corporate entities

6) Do you think KHIS could be improved in any way and, if so, how? E.g. new features, improvements to existing functionality

More CRM functionality A button for Mail To that auto loads the project code in the cc or bcc field

7) Any other comments

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Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

D.2 Discussion of Questionnaire Results The following was devised during the KHIS Champions Meeting, 17th June 2010, 10am-12pm 1) How is KHIS used within your university?  Within business development team  APPLIES TO ALL SITES o Manage internal + business enquiries relating to consultancy, analytical services, visits + R&D grant assessments  Groups in various departments (Sun + Durham)  Circulate enquiries + elicit feedback (ALL)  Rollout to other groups anticipated/ongoing (Esp. Sun) 2) How do you personally use KHIS to assist with your day-to-day duties?  Projects o Log new enquiries o Circulate enquiries  BIG FEATURE o View new enquiries o Check project progress o Create actions/comments + automatically notify users (via email) o Forward emails to KHIS to maintain audit trail o File store  Actions o To-do lists o Assign actions to other users – to chase enquiry responses (Sun, Dur, Northumbria)  Organisations o Log details of new companies o Maintain existing records o Company searches (by keyword, location, etc.)  Contacts o Log details of new clients/academics o Maintain existing records o Client searches o Academic expertise searches  Reporting o Financials  Project value  Aggregated project values  Outstanding invoices o Projects by status o Response reports  Collections o Build collections of organisations + contacts (for marketing – Sunderland) 3) What does KHIS let you do that you can't do elsewhere?  Circulate enquiries + get feedback  Project email store  Email project team members with actions/comments etc. - i.e. reminders  Track a project from start to finish  Receive, share, collate responses to enquiries  Keeps all info relating to a project in one place  Share historical data relating to particular companies/projects - useful if contacting a company to know the history  Search academic expertise across 5 universities in one place 50 of 53

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Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

   

Easily check project details of another team member Access system from home Sharing info between separate corporate entities Share contact/company data

Top unique features (most important first) 1. Sharing info across sites / keep everything in one place COLLABORATION 2. Circulate potential enquiries - e.g. if Durham receive enquiry they can't handle, can circulate to other unis easily 3. Cost 1. unlimited number of users for fixed annual fee 2. no charge for development work / support 4. Generic system - all others gain from what a particular uni wants from the system / enhancements utilised by all 5. Conforms to thinking a practices of the universities - bespoke / flexible / dynamic system, adaptable to changing needs of universities (off the shelf software is "fixed") (linked to 4 above) 6. Academic expertise search across sites 7. Send emails into the system and store 8. Unlimited things you can store against a project or company or contacts (other CRMs have restrictions) / unlimited doc sizes 4) Do you think KHIS could be improved in any way? User admin interface allowing universities to create new user accounts + manage permissions (nominated site administrator as in KHIS 1.5) HIGH PRIORITY / HIGH LEVEL OF EFFORT (LOE)  Permission management on projects – linked to above LOW PRIORITY / MEDIUM LOE 



Circulate enquiries - only one generic circulation list at minute + project team members HIGH PRIORTY / MEDIUM LOE o as it stands the generic circulation list is already large - adding multiple users from diff't sites to it is impractical o have separate circulation lists for each site - tailored o allow site admins to add people to the circulation list for their site o with tailored circulation lists KHIS more dept's could be encouraged to use system - i.e. by circulating enquiries to new users they would be drawn in



Reporting HIGH PRIORITY / LOE TBD o more flexibility preferred KHIS 1.5 formatted reports as they dynamically update o more like KHIS 1.5 - search by projects by status, type o KHIS 2.0 Excel export more time consuming o need projects by owner report (as in KHIS 1.5) - include Export to Excel option from contact home page?? o save search parameters - like a collection, but when you load collection it auto refreshes with new data - this is where Crystal in 1.5 worked v well o above are v important for report users Pam (Durham), Helen (Sun) o "how much work has academic/dept done in period of time report" - Durham v keen on this report; search criteria at minute is client/project-based o like KHIS 2.0 org filter report - have criteria in separate tab rather that top of screen as cluttered o Export actions/"to-do" report o Redevelopment of Staff Key Skills Tool - i.e. record expertise keywords for all contact - v difficult to maintain; imported from KHIS 1.5 for existing contacts but v out of date - nice to have but impractical?? 51 of 53

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Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

  

Built-in FAQ/training guide (e.g. like Microsoft Office help system); USE WIKI linked to KHIS; tooltips are good feature of KHIS 2.0 MEDIUM PRIORITY / MEDIUM LOE Improved look and feel - better/more usable interface - not really needed - just KHIS 1.5 users were familiar with that layout - new layout can be learned More informative error messages

 

Bulk import of contacts LOW PRIORTY / MEDIUM LOE - potentially difficult to do consistently Diary integration - e.g. iCalendar, Outlook – difficult to implement as KHIS actions tied to projects; needs thinking about properly



Mobile KHIS LOW PRIORITY / V HIGH LOE v difficult to implement - can't see how there could be a mobile version as interface complex



Improve overall speed / faster searches - ALWAYS ONGOING



More CRM functionality (???)



A "mail to" button that auto loads a project code in the CC field LOW PRIORITY / LOW LOE



Improved archiving - e.g. when a project is archived, all related data should be automatically archived MEDIUM PRIOIRTY / LOW LOE



Edit company hierarchies - desirable (irritating at minute)



Delete data entered in error - better to archive unless record not linked to anything?? PRIORITY LOW / LOE MEDIUM



Reminder email for overdue actions PRIORITY LOW / LOE LOW



Audit trail - e.g. view all edits relating to a project - who did what and when



Bulk close actions LOW PRIORITY / LOW LOE

5) Other comments?  Champions forum very useful platform for sharing information  At the start of KHIS 2.0 development, there was a lack of clarity on aims and objectives  System needs to adapt to the requirements of different user groups

52 of 53

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Reference:

Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE

Project Title:

Knowledge House Trial

Appendix E ONE Technical Specification Summary The following key customisations are necessary to meet the requirements of the One North East (ONE) Inward Investment Team (IIT): 1. All projects will be created from the “ONE IIT” organisation record and not under the client organisation recorded as per usual KHIS projects 2. The details of the client requesting the information needs to be recorded against the project o

This information must only be visible to ONE users and the Knowledge House Central Team  Create “SHOW_ONE_CLIENT” security role and assign to appropriate users

3. The following additional account-specific organisation attributes are required: o o o

Company Name [text] Country (where company is based) [dataset] Company sector [dataset]  Information  Visit  Info/visit  Global Partnership Text field – needs to be changed to drop down containing the following values:  Design  Digital and Creative  Energy and Environment  Food and Drink  Health, healthcare and life sciences  Nanotech  General

4. Separate tab “Non Commercial Details” required in project view o o

Restricted by security role Only be visible if project is marked as “non-commercial”

5. Reporting functionality o o

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Need to be able to select all non commercial projects in given time window (i.e. between from-to dates) and list basic project information and the fields listed above “Export to Excel” option required for more in-depth interrogation

www.jiscinfonet.ac.uk

ANNEX KHIS Roadmap

KHIS Roadmap Version 1.1 Paul Cranner

Contents Revision History ...................................................................................................................................... 3 Stakeholders ........................................................................................................................................... 3 Standard Terminology............................................................................................................................. 3 1. Introduction .................................................................................................................................... 4 1.1 Definitions............................................................................................................................... 4 1.2 Example................................................................................................................................... 4 2. Process Improvements.................................................................................................................... 5 2.1 Tactical Processes ................................................................................................................... 5 2.1.1 Training Material............................................................................................................. 5 2.1.2 Work in Progress Project Plan......................................................................................... 5 2.1.3 Maintenance Process and Notifications ......................................................................... 5 2.1.4 Environment Review ....................................................................................................... 5 2.2 Strategic Processes ................................................................................................................. 5 2.2.1 Roadmap Document ....................................................................................................... 5 3. Functionality ................................................................................................................................... 6 3.1 Additions ................................................................................................................................. 6 3.1.1 User Administration ........................................................................................................ 6 3.1.2 Dynamic Circulation ........................................................................................................ 6 3.1.3 Permission Management ................................................................................................ 6 3.1.4 Project Type Management.............................................................................................. 6 3.1.5 Project Team Role Management .................................................................................... 6 3.1.6 Organisation/Contact Import.......................................................................................... 6 3.1.7 Diary Integration ............................................................................................................. 6 3.1.8 Project Integration (Newcastle and Teesside) ................................................................ 7 3.1.9 Bulk Close Actions ........................................................................................................... 7 3.1.10 Mobile KHIS..................................................................................................................... 7 3.1.11 Help ................................................................................................................................. 7 3.1.12 Mailto Button.................................................................................................................. 7 3.1.13 Organisation Hierarchies................................................................................................. 7 3.1.14 Reminder emails ............................................................................................................. 7 3.1.15 Entity history ................................................................................................................... 7 3.1.16 Tender Application Process Support............................................................................... 7 3.2 Improvements......................................................................................................................... 8 3.2.1 Reporting......................................................................................................................... 8 3.2.2 Spellchecker Review........................................................................................................ 8 3.2.3 Action documents ........................................................................................................... 8 3.2.4 Bulk archive..................................................................................................................... 8 3.2.5 Account-specific Project Types ....................................................................................... 8 3.2.6 W3C Standards Data Cleansing....................................................................................... 8 4. Application ...................................................................................................................................... 8 4.1 Localised Improvements ......................................................................................................... 8 4.1.1 Review Database Structure............................................................................................. 9 4.1.2 Review Organisations...................................................................................................... 9 4.1.3 Review Contacts.............................................................................................................. 9 4.2 Architectural Improvements................................................................................................... 9 4.2.1 Third Party Component Review ...................................................................................... 9

Revision History Version Date Reason for Change 1.0 2010-06-09 Initial Version 1.1 2010-06-21 Revised to include KHIS Champions recommendations

Stakeholders Name Paul Cranner Unis4NE Durham University Newcastle University Northumbria University University of Sunderland Teesside University MJ Associates

Role Author/Senior KHIS Developer Host/owner of KHIS platform and service Partner university and key user of system Partner university Partner university and key user of system Partner university and key user of system Partner university JISC project trial partner

Standard Terminology Term KH KHIS LOE OSS

Definition Knowledge House Knowledge House Information System Level of Effort Open Source Software

Approval Required? Yes Yes No No No No No No

1. Introduction This is the Product Roadmap Planning document for the KHIS system. A roadmap is used for documenting all planned high level changes for a product. The planning document aids the creation of the roadmap by enumerating all suggested improvements and giving an assessment of their priority.

1.1

Definitions

Each entry in the planning document will have several flags, giving some estimates to aid scheduling of the improvements:    

Priority (Urgent, High, Medium, Low, In Progress) An estimate of the priority of the improvement. LOE (High, Medium, Low, Trivial) Level of Effort. An initial estimate of how long it would take to implement the improvement. Once an improvement is scheduled, a more detailed LOE may be specified. Scope (Approve, Consult, Internal) An indicator of how widely the team should be consulted before an improvement should be implemented. Impact (Global, Local, Internal) An indicator of how visible the improvement will be once implemented. This may affect training, documentation, etc. Global changes will affect most users. Local changes will affect only a subset of users, where the subset may be decided by location or by the way they use the system.

1.2

Example

Here is an example of how the flags may be decided for a particular suggested improvement: It is suggested to replace the functionality of rich text editing boxes with something more suitable. 

 



Priority: Medium There are some browser compatibility issues with the existing solution, along with some licensing issues. Updating the code would increase the availability of the application to more users. LOE: Low (1-2 days) We are planning on using an established off-the-shelf solution, with a more suitable licence. We need to test on multiple browsers / systems before releasing. Scope: Consult We are going to inform everyone of the intended change, and consider any specific requirements or suggestions. Since the overall functionality remains the same, we are not going to ask each member to formally approve the change before implementing. Impact: Global This is going to be seen by every user once implemented. We need to consider changes to training documents, and be aware of possible support issues once it is released.

2. Process Improvements Process improvements are not changes to the product itself. They are changes to how we plan the product and support it. The goal is to have processes that support the development of the project and are inclusive to as many parties as possible, without becoming intrusive or cumbersome.

2.1

Tactical Processes

These are processes that are directly related to the short term development and running of the application. 2.1.1 Training Material Transfer Word-based user manual to wiki and revise the guide to align it with latest KHIS functionality + grant â&#x20AC;&#x153;wiki editâ&#x20AC;? privilege to KHIS Champions. Priority Medium

LOE Medium

Scope Approve

Impact Global

2.1.2 Work in Progress Project Plan This is a document similar to the Roadmap, but on a much lower scale, concentrating on work that has been scheduled and ensuring that we have the time and resources to meet the milestones we set. Priority High

LOE Low

Scope Internal

Impact Internal

2.1.3 Maintenance Process and Notifications Maintenance and application updates are currently performed on an ad-hoc basis. It may be useful to schedule an update window during which updates should occur. We should also define a notification process warning of any planned outages and informing of any new functionality. Priority Medium

LOE Low

Scope Consult

Impact Local

2.1.4 Environment Review We currently have live, testing, demo and training environments. Need to decide whether these are sufficient, and to consider any stability implications of co-hosting these. Priority Low

2.2

LOE Low

Scope Internal

Impact Local

Strategic Processes

These are processes used in the long-term planning of the application. 2.2.1 Roadmap Document The Roadmap is a living document that is constantly updated with order of development of the application. It gives information regarding when features may come available and allows strategic planning. Priority High

LOE Medium

Scope Consult

Impact Local

3. Functionality Functionality improvements are visible changes to how the application works. They could be completely new functions, improvements to existing capabilities or even removal of redundant options.

3.1

Additions

3.1.1 User Administration Develop user administration interface allowing creation of new user accounts and maintenance of existing accounts. Priority High

LOE High

Scope Consult

Impact Global

3.1.2 Dynamic Circulation Implement account-specific circulation lists + administration interface. Priority High

LOE Medium

Scope Consult

Impact Global

3.1.3 Permission Management Develop interface allowing entity permissions to be granted, modified and revoked by users with sufficient privileges. 3.1.4 Project Type Management Develop interface allowing project types to be maintained on a per-account basis. Priority Low

LOE Medium

Scope Consult

Impact Global

3.1.5 Project Team Role Management Develop interface allowing additional project member team roles to be defined and existing roles modified on a per-account basis. Priority Low

LOE Medium

Scope Consult

Impact Global

3.1.6 Organisation/Contact Import Develop import adapters to allow import of contacts/companies from Outlook address book, Excel/CSV, vCards, XML. Priority Low

LOE Medium

Scope Consult

Impact Global

3.1.7 Diary Integration Support the optional emailing of meeting requests and action items to team members using iCalendar (RFC 2445). Priority Low

LOE Medium

Scope Consult

Impact Global

3.1.8 Project Integration (Newcastle and Teesside) Implement import adapters allowing automatic import of projects from Newcastle and Teesside CRM systems into KHIS. Priority Low

LOE High

Scope Approve

Impact Local

3.1.9 Bulk Close Actions Implement function to allow multiple actions to be closed at once. Priority Low

LOE Low

Scope Consult

Impact Global

3.1.10 Mobile KHIS Develop a mobile or version of KHIS for use via PDAs, smart phones, etc. encompassing key functionality â&#x20AC;&#x201C; i.e. project summaries, action lists, searches. Priority Medium

LOE High

Scope Consult

Impact Global

3.1.11 Help Link specific KHIS pages (via help icons) to wiki help guide. Priority Medium

LOE Low

Scope Consult

Impact Global

3.1.12 Mailto Button Implement mailto functionality to auto load project code into CC field and project title into subject. Priority Low

LOE Trivial

Scope Consult

Impact Global

3.1.13 Organisation Hierarchies Implement mechanism allowing organisational hierarchies to be edited. Priority Low

LOE Medium

Scope Consult

Impact Global

3.1.14 Reminder emails Schedule task to auto send reminder emails for overdue actions (optional on per user basis). Priority Low

LOE Low

Scope Consult

Impact Global

3.1.15 Entity history Implement display tag to show all audited actions relating to system entities â&#x20AC;&#x201C; i.e. which user inserted/updated/archived specific records and when. Priority Low

LOE Medium

Scope Consult

Impact Global

3.1.16 Tender Application Process Support Implement project types and tabs that customise the system for use in tender applications.

Priority Low

3.2

LOE Medium

Scope Consult

Impact Local

Improvements

3.2.1 Reporting Review reporting functionality with a view to implementing dynamic reporting options as per Crystal reporting in KHIS 1.5. Priority High

LOE TBD

Scope Consult

Impact Global

3.2.2 Spellchecker Review Review the spellchecker in the system; either implement a real-time spellchecker (ala Word) or automatically run the spellchecker whenever a form is submitted. Priority Low

LOE Low

Scope Internal

Impact Global

3.2.3 Action documents Allow documents to be attached to actions in the system â&#x20AC;&#x201C; i.e. in the same way that documents can be attached to responses. Priority Medium

LOE Low

Scope Internal

Impact Global

3.2.4 Bulk archive Revise archive procedure to archive all entities related to a project. Priority Medium

LOE Low

Scope Approve

Impact Global

3.2.5 Account-specific Project Types Currently project types are global and visible across all accounts. Account-specific project types need to be introduced to sit alongside global, generic, project types. Priority Low

LOE Medium

Scope Consult

Impact Global

3.2.6 W3C Standards Data Cleansing Archive redundant data and schema from the database. Priority High

LOE Medium

Scope Consult

Impact Global

4. Application 4.1

Localised Improvements

These are changes specific to particular parts of the application. They may include minor functionality changes, but the primary focus is to improve how things are done, as opposed to what they do.

4.1.1 Review Database Structure Review database structure (Entity-Attribute-Value) and stored procedures with a view to improving overall speed of the application. Priority Ongoing

LOE TBD

Scope Internal

Impact Global

4.1.2 Review Organisations Review organisation screen layout and database attributes. Priority Low

LOE Low

Scope Internal

Impact Global

4.1.3 Review Contacts Review contact screen layout and database attributes. Priority Ongoing

4.2

LOE TBD

Scope Internal

Impact Global

Architectural Improvements

These are usually extensive changes to the application. They should rarely produce any functionality changes, but they provide the foundation for future updates. 4.2.1 Third Party Component Review Review the use of third party components and libraries. Consider the compatibility and license situation of each. Priority Medium

LOE Low

Scope Internal

Impact Global

ANNEX An Investigation into the Open Source Potential of KHIS

An Investigation into the Open Source Potential of the Knowledge House Information System1 Richard Mulberry, Paul Cranner, Kevin Ginty Centre for Internet Technologies, University of Sunderland, Sunderland, UK cc5rmu@student.sunderland.ac.uk, paul.cranner@sunderland.ac.uk, kevin.ginty@sunderland.ac.uk

Abstract Knowledge House (KH) is a collaborative service which helps companies gain access to the world class skills, expertise and specialist resources available within the five universities in North East England. To support the work undertaken across the network a bespoke webbased collaborative client/project management system is used – the Knowledge House Information System (KHIS). The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly to investigate current affairs for both open source (OS) software and open standards. To gain a practical understanding, the paper initially deduces what we mean by these terms. To best achieve a flavour of OS today a range of case studies were selected from literature that highlighted the major talking points. The role of open standards is then defined detailing the impact they have in the industry and their relationship to OS compared. The authors’ view of the future for both OS and open standards is then stated. The paper then introduces KHIS and its underlying technology. The second aim of the paper is to use the findings presented to determine whether a vanilla version of the system is an appropriate candidate for release as OS software.

Paper submitted as part of the Knowledge House Trial Project. The project was funded by JISC under the ‘Facilitating Collaboration’ stream of the BCE programme as part of the ‘Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE’ project.

1|Page

1. Introduction Knowledge House (KH) is a collaborative service which helps companies gain access to the world class skills, expertise and specialist resources available within the five universities in North East England – Durham, Newcastle, Northumbria, Sunderland and Teesside. KH operates via a hub and spoke model with a small central headquarters and staff distributed at all five universities. To support the work undertaken across the network a bespoke, web-based collaborative client/project management system is used – the Knowledge House Information System (KHIS). As part of an on-going JISC project funded under the ‘Facilitating Collaboration’ stream of the BCE programme as part of the ‘Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCE’ project Stewart.A (2010), KH has undertaken to explore the potential for releasing an Open Source (OS) vanilla version of KHIS. The aim of this paper is twofold. Firstly to investigate the impact of open standards and OS software on both private and public organisations. We begin by defining what we mean by both of these terms, attempting to set the scene and see if any relationships are evident. After gaining a firm understanding of these terms we will look into evaluating the strengths and weaknesses of OS software using real world case studies showcasing criteria such as costs, maintenance, support, training and security. We then analyse current trends and contemplate what the future holds for both OS and open standards. Secondly we introduce the KHIS platform and consider the criteria presented in order to determine whether KHIS is a suitable candidate for release as OS software.

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2. What is Open Source Software and Open Standards? 2.1 What do we mean by Open Source? Asiri.S (2003) states it is very difficult to define the notion of OS as the term’s meaning differs from practitioner to practitioner. On explanation Asiri states three endeavour examples about OS which are: non profit/freedom of ownership, support for proprietary software, and the free software movement. Including ‘free software’ as part of the definition for OS is one example of a plethora that blurs the two. Both OS and free software share common characteristics grouped under Free/Open Source Software (FOSS), creating this blur encouraging them to become interchangeable when in fact they are distinguishable. Free software encompasses the ideology of being “free” to manipulate anyway you see fit, with the focus having as little legal restriction as possible. The GNU identified by Waring.T & Maddocks.P (2005) state it should be thought as free speech to all (I can manipulate what I want) rather than a free beer (I can get this for free) for all, which is the common misconception. The most definitive definition for OS software is thought to come from the Open Source Initiative (OSI) which provides a criterion of what OS software must fulfil (see Appendix A). Scacchi.W (2007) focuses on licensing (highlighted under criteria 8 & 9 of the definition) as the main distinctions between both. This definition is supported by OSS Watch which recognises OSI as the final authority in order to avoid confusion and debate, Wilson.J (2010). It is stated that free software licences are nearly always with the GNU General Public Licence (GPL), whilst OS can choose licences and

copyrights that are required to comply with the Open Source Definition and end users. It however does not give those who had involvement in its redistribution any private intellectual property rights Osterloh.M & Sandra Rota (2007). The GPL, if utilised by OS software, influences the model by defining the notion of copyleft as a means to guarantee free distribution Cerri.D & Fuggetta.A (2007). Therefore, it is not a concrete requirement of OS to be in economic terms ‘free’. Essentially the two promote the same and have commonality that software can be shared; however they conflict by the angle from which they approach. The GNU highlight that Free Software is a social movement towards software “freedom”, whilst OS is a methodology to progressively produce the best possible software by opening the source code to its community. Therefore it can be said that OS and free software agreed ideology is the distribution of open code to be the most powerful force to create the best possible software. The difference is how much freedom is allowed; the OS believe needing to restrict the level of openness of the software development model i.e. licensing may change the model completely, so long as it stays within the boundaries of the Open Source Definition.

OpenOffice (who on the 28th October 2009 reached their 100,000,000 download). The figures quoted and the bundle of examples suggests that the OS was prior to the economical crisis. Morelli.R & de Lanerolle T (2009) make reference to the current student age group who have grown up with this OS movement. “In general, they are deeply immersed in the open and sharing culture that the Web has become, without necessarily seeing the connections to the free software movement that, in many ways, initiated that culture.” At the current time of writing, websites such as Facebook and Wikipedia are two prime examples of this sharing culture. This fast generation of up to the second pool of data has made accessibility even greater. This sharing culture however comes with its limitations, with Facebook causing riot in the private sector for distracting employees away from their work. Furthermore in the public sector Wikipedia is seen in the academic circles as an unreliable source of information that students should avoid. Whist these are two of the more famous examples, many similar and parody sites have put questions on the reliability of information on the internet.

2.2 Open Source Today

Amongst the literature when investigating Open Standards, authors such as Kesan.J & Shah.R (2007) and Tiemann.M (2006) make reference to the difficulty of a concrete definition. In accordance with Ceri.D & Fuggetta.A (2007) the main focus of open standards is to encourage interoperability as if adhering to the same standards means that all systems work with that particular element the same. This reduces the ability for any software user to be “locked in” to a particular piece of software which is also the focus of open/free software. Having the focus is one thing but to distinguish what an open standard is and how we can compare requires a definition.

To emphasise the importance of OS in the current climate we must look at examples of its implementation. We only have to log onto OS community sites dedicated to OS projects such as SourceForge with their figures to realise that it is commanding a huge amount of interest. The website ‘Inforworld’ identifies the top 10 OS software initiatives ever, with many of the well known examples such as Linux Kernel, MySql and Apache Server making appearances (full list shown in Appendix B). There are many familiar absentees, most noticeably Mozilla, along with Oracle’s recent purchase SUN’s 3|Page

2.3 Open Standards

Ceri.D & Fuggetta.A go on to highlight that the key issue to the confusion is not what the term ‘standard’ is – as this is widely used in many disciplines without much manipulation – it is the level of ‘openness’ that constitute an open standard. Whilst authors such as Kesan.J & Shah.R (2007) have identified de-facto and de jure standards Ceri & Fuggetta have managed to break these down a stage further. Excluding proprietary standards the four scales of openness are: Disclosed (owned by company but made available), Concerted (Consultation process but decision of participants made by company), “Open” Concerted (open participation by all), “Open” de jure (standards managed by official international and national standardisation). The most popular definition of Open Standards comes from Bruce Perens who distinguishes that open standards are not just a specification; it is the principles behind the standard and the practices offered that support the standard. For the six principles and practices identified by Perens.R (see Appendix C). This was later adapted by Krechmer.K (2006) to include others with Tiemann.M (2006) also including a four level distinction of what constitutes and OS. Indeed they are scattered around the literature but there is no defining line. Kesan.J & Shan.R (2008) open standards making its bow in the U.S state of Massachusetts, “First, the standard is publicly available at a minimal cost. Second, no entity controls the standard, or the standard is licensed on “reasonable and non-discriminatory terms.” Third, the development process for creating the standard involves public participation.” Both of these definitions confirm that one of the principles of open standards is that there is little to no ownership and there is a great deal of public involvement, which makes it differ considerably from the private de-facto and de jure standards but

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the parallels start to emerge between OS and open standards.

2.4 What is the Relationship? Having defined both open standards and OS software we can see some quite evident overlaps. We have only to look at their name to see that they both precede with ‘open’ which means that the commonality shared between the two should give us an indication. What both open standards and software share is that they are firstly freely available to the general public and that there is little to no cost involved. Secondly the public have the opportunity to have a direct involvement or influence on the outcome, these elements in essence are what constitutes the term ‘open’. The debate applicable to both as we have seen is the levels of openness. Dalziel.J (2003) makes a comparison between the two upon development stating that it appears more natural to develop the OS product first and then make it standard compliant. The two are considered similar but it is wrong to suggest that open standards are criteria to be used by OS software or that it must be compliant. Upon Sun developing Java with an OS licence it declared it would not become an open standard as this only applied to the implementation, with the standard not being revealed Ceri.D & Fuggetta.A (2007). As we have seen also because open standards are available to all it does mean that proprietary software vendors can implement open standards. Therefore OS software does not have to utilize open standards but it is of great benefit if they are able to do so as OS software can miss interoperability completely. Open standards encourage this competition as it is likely to bring about the best possible system, which is the objective of OS in the first place. Therefore whilst neither has any legal requirement to each other the benefit from

the relationship allows both to achieve their primary goals.

3. Open Source in the Public Sector 3.1 Introduction With the financial climate as it is today, we would expect OS software to play a prominent role in the public sector particularly governments who have a responsibility to invest the taxpayers money wisely. Governments are the largest purchasers of ICT systems and are therefore an extremely valid source of information when coming to evaluate what is used in industry and what isn’t. Waring.T & Maddocks.T (2005). Björgvinsson.T & Thorbergsson.H (2007) confirm that governments benefit as they are in a position to ‘lock in’ a whole nation by choosing certain products. They also identify that there is a significant issue with customising preparatory software, particularly to smaller countries. The benefit of OS software and the community aspect of sharing is that local developers can fuel rapid development of a satisfactory result. This obviously is dependent on the scale of customisation (which typically is of Western heritage); however this is still an issue for preparatory software developers. The nature of governments getting open software correct is it has a cascading effect throughout the entire nation which is its biggest advantage, however choosing incorrectly will have the opposite effect. We will now have a look at a real world case study at a hospital and then look at individual case studies for each criteria identified in the introduction.

3.2 The Beaumont Hospital Fitzgerald.B & Kenny.T (2003)

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An example of a successful implementation is that of Beaumont Hospital in Ireland. It is cited that the three factors that instigated the move from proprietary based software (which was heavily subsidised) were principles, pragmatism and practicality. Both principles and pragmatisms focused mainly on the cost goal of OS software having very little face value, whilst the practicality element was focused on the exact likeness to some of the major proprietary software used, e.g. the move from Microsoft Excel to Star Office. In terms of cost the hospital is estimated to have saved up to thirteen million Euros over a span of five years with four point seven million saved in the first year of the switch. A further advantage to the hospital is the flexibility of the OS software as it can be distributed around the network easily. This was a problem for the hospital as when people are moved from one department to another they tend to feel to have entitlement to the proprietary software. It is wrong to think that OS software is always compatible and has little or no cost. Beaumont Hospital found that there can be progressive costs in terms of support. In this particular case study, although twenty thousand pounds were spent on support by OpenApp (a software company) this was still a lot cheaper than implementing a proprietary version of the software on a whole. When purchasing software off the shelf it is common to see built-in support for a period of time which is usually infinite. However with OS, companies run the risk of being solely dependent on the community to support problems with a particular version or incompatibility. Even to a certain degree if we have a hot desk or development team the flexible nature of OS will still pull them away from their primary roles. The Beaumont Hospital highlighted particularly having problems with spending a huge amount of their budget on

arranging training sessions which were constantly postponed or cancelled due to lack of attendance. In order to solve this problem they reduced their need for staff time with the introduction of an OS elearning application called “caraloine”, which allowed many employees to choose when most convenient and also allow those who required training who were on the road on the companies behalf an opportunity to engage in the training. The saving given from hiring a professional to undertake the training a number of times has further benefitted the hospital.

3.3 Cost Suffolk College – OpenSource Academy Many public sectors rely on money from people, whether it is in the form of tax or charitable donations. Therefore, they have a responsibility to utilise it effectively. The first advantage that is perhaps seen as obvious when mentioning OS software is the huge financial benefit. Proprietary software will require you to purchase the software in some form; either purchasing the physical disk, or an agreed licence which can have conditions attached, usually the period of time and the number of machines. This can be a real benefit particularly for the larger organisations and the public sector as the numbers tend to multiply based on the number of machines that need the software. There are many examples of the savings that can be made in the education sector with the need for more access to computers and specialised software with an increasingly lower budget. Suffolk College are one example of an institution that utilised this when needing to upgrade their current email system, with Microsoft Express the prime target to distribute to over eighteen thousand people. With involvement of System Integration (Total Solution Computing) and IT service suppliers (GBdirect) they focused on a number of OS software (Spamassassin – spam filter, SuSE Linux Enterprise Server – Server 6|Page

Software) that could work around many of the features offered by an all inclusive package such as Microsoft Exchange. If Microsoft Exchange had been offered on this scale it is estimated it would have cost in the range of one hundred and ten thousand pounds.

3.4 Maintenance Koponen.T, Hotti.V (2005) Part of the strength of OS software is the community that continues progressively to reduce the amount of defects and develop the code further. However, it can be said that one underlying flaw with opening up solutions and maintenance to the masses is how you manage it, and how or whether it is going to be solved. Koponen.T, Hotti.V (2005) introduces a case study on the similarities of the ‘standard’ framework for maintenance process stealing many elements from the ISO/IEC Maintenance process activities. Both Mozilla and Apache satisfy these activities with CVS as a version management system and Buzgilla as their defect management system. Any member of the community can submit a modification to the project with those accepted passed to the version control management system CVS. The final decision comes from the core set of programmers allocated to its development who do not only validate the integrity of the solution, but must access the quality if more than one solution is put forth.

3.5 Training Open Office – Migrant Helpline Training is one of the essential costs throughout all organisations, particularly in the IT industry as the pace is especially vigorous. Migrant Helpline is a charitable organisation helping asylum seekers access support. Like any charitable organisation any saving that can be made is of great significance. Therefore their decision to move from a Microsoft Office suite to

Open Office had long projected savings by not having to pay for Microsoft upgrades, services and of course the licence itself. Even though the User Interface (UI) is of great similarity, it is found that even slight changes can throw employees. Therefore it was suggested that a portion of the saving would initially be used to bring in a consultant to manage the switchover which mainly focused on training the current employees. This is usually very expensive as not only do they have to deal with entire organisations worth of people but the training is usually specialised, requires full commitment for an unknown period of time and is well known to be of high value as knowledge is power. The consideration was weighed up against the overall cost of the proprietary licence, with the longer term saving preferred.

3.6 Security Hoepman.J.H & Jacobs.B (2007) Schryen.G & Kadura.R, (2009) drawing on work from Messmer, E. (2005) identify that comparisons between open/closed software are fraught with danger due to the amount of “religion” that exists between the two. It is important to deal in fact, therefore as what we have tried to do by looking at the majority of case studies and literature. The community nature of OS software does not have any strict eligibility of who is able to introduce solutions that potentially could have security loopholes that may stutter the process. Hoepman.J.H & Jacobs.B (2007) inform that developers of Linux kernel discovered a backdoor in what appeared a harmless error checking facility. With the huge inconveniences of computer systems it is quite understandable why both public/private organisations are hesitant towards OS. Hoepman.J.H & Jacobs.B (2007) provides a counter argument towards OS stating that eventually even closed source software will eventually leak its way onto the internet, with a specific example being the Windows NT operating system. 7|Page

Unfortunately due to the closed model it is far less responsive to these problems with the development time of patches/fixes being months later. Proprietary software companies ultimately also have different end goals to the OS environment, with a limited workforce; most of the maintenance is placed in parallel with development of new software. There is therefore a risk that companies stop supporting, which requires users to seek a newer version.

3.7 Support Becta – Open Source Software in Schools Becta’s introduced eight case studies on fifteen schools all of which have OS elements which have three outline aims. These aims individually touch upon on the performance, cost and successful implementation respectively. The final results that were collected from these eight case studies were varied but some common themes towards compatibility and unfamiliarity appeared. Whilst many commented on the advantages to OS software mentioned in previous case studies, some came up with some surprising disadvantages. More than a few of the case studies indicated that there was no support from Microsoft to make some of its products available on OS platforms such as Linux. Furthermore it appears that Microsoft have developed their niche in academia as most institutes have a need for one or more of their products as the students are so accustomed to the look and feel of it. There was a common theme that because OS software appeared to be more stable and of a superior build quality there was less need for support. One institution following on from this point stated that OSS did seem more reliable and because of their excellent support from people around them with expertise they received excellent support. Of course this is not applicable to all and if this knowledge is not in house then it may end up quite

expensive. Usually in terms of Microsoft and other proprietary software a support service is built into the cost of the software.

4. Proprietary Fights Back 4.1 Benefits of Proprietary Microsoft â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Newham The case studies looked at so far have all been from selected businesses who have attempted to use OS, so based on the evidence of the case studies analysed thus far why is proprietary software needed? Leading the fight for preparatory systems Microsoft amongst others can justify in their own case studies that they can provide the many advantages identified in OS and more. We will now look at a case study from Microsoft implementing a new ICT system in Newman Council in the United Kingdom. In similar fashion to many other companies their aims were to reduce cost, provide business advantage and establish a long term solution. It is hard to imagine how preparatory software can actually lower the costs of OS due to the vastly expensive fees and maintenance associated particularly with Microsoft products. However it was calculated that a Microsoft based system could prove up to 13.5% less expensive than the current system. The software, as generally expected, was more expensive however the cost of implementing the solution was cheaper with the OS solution only providing half the saving (7%). In addition, the migration costs for the Microsoft solution were estimated to be 68% lower than the switching costs of migrating to an OS platform. Microsoft state that their solutions are more secure than any OS alternative and make emphasis towards their continuous investment in the Trustworthy Computing Initiative. 8|Page

In a closing statement one of the main advantages of preparatory software is the need for companies to depend on their software. Implementing Microsoft based software doesnâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;t even involve a great deal of risk as it has been extensively tested and stable, it is in essence how Microsoft made their name in the first place. Perhaps the biggest contrast in the final statement was the idea of consistency and predictability that companies seek, which would most likely justify a purchase of preparatory software. After all ICT is a very expensive field and whilst constantly changing there is a necessity to place the right foundations in order to realistic deal with change. While in the OS community we can bunny hop from one piece to another, this is fraught with danger due to retraining, compatibility and teething issues which ultimately take the most precious element in business, time.

5. The Future of Open Source and Standards 5.1 Open Source Reflecting on the literature, many authors have their own theories on what the factors are that will influence whether OS Software will take over. Having looked at the likes of Iceland Thorbergesson.H, Bjorgvinsson.T & Valfells.A (2007) and particularly the recent UK Government Watson.T (2009) stance on open software, we know that both show OS is breaking down more and more barriers and is actually becoming the preference over proprietary software rather than being considered the cheapest option. Action point four of the document states where there is no significant price difference between the two, OS will be the preferred option due to its flexibility. With this extended freedom it provides a platform for OS to grow. It is likely therefore that more OS software will climb its way to the top of other domains mimicking those that have gone before them such as Apache.

Campbell-Kelly.M (2008) identifies that “the most prominent software development methods are those that seem to work best with the contemporary technological and economic constraints.” This debate is then applied towards the next software phenomenon, software as a service (SaaS) with both open and closed software having equally competent representation. A key benefit of a SaaS over closed software is that it is a diversion away from being locked in to a particular piece of software (which was one of its main disadvantages) to software that can be purchased on a pay while you play basis. Regardless of the particular application Trumba (2007) identifies five key benefits of SaaS including cost/time savings, diverting budget away from IT infrastructure and immediate access to the latest innovations. The OS model also has to adapt as identified by Asay.M (2007) that the benefit of switching no longer applies to OS software as once you leave the service there is a need to get the data in order to use it for another. From the authors’ viewpoint, unless something drastic happens in the next five years it is predicted that growth will continue its current direction. It is expected, with governments becoming more amenable towards OS, for them to have new opportunities and hence get a few more OS products at the top of everyday used software. According to Appelbe.B (2003) the winner of the battle will be decided by two domains, word processing and operating systems. A critical battle will be between Open Office and Microsoft Office, with the emphasis on Open Office to see how far they can go to surpassing the facilities on offer by Microsoft and breaking down its commonality stigma. In order for them to compete there is a possibility that licensing could be reduced to combat the open software moment initially. However the platform in which users choose to do everyday tasks is likely 9|Page

to migrate and change and both will again vie again to be at the top of pile. As identified this is likely to be SaaS.

5.2 Open Standards The keyword interoperability highlighted during our definition of open standards is likely to underpin the future building of software. Models with increased interoperability such as SaaS are rapidly evolving with Bill Gates describing the software “services wave” as the “next sea of change [that] is upon us” Trumba (2007). This has, and will, continue to accelerate the need for open standards as many consumers wish to take advantage of being able to perform multiple tasks of a similar nature across a number of different services within the same browser. A current example of this ‘grouping’ is Tweetdeck which provides simultaneous use of social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter Orlando.D (2009). For Tweetdeck to achieve this it requires all sites to have an Open Application Programme Interface (API) that allows these individual services to be accessed and treated in the same manner. At the time of writing the downloading of Tweetdeck is provided for both personal computers (PC) and iPhones in ‘app’ form. This trend has provided an extra complexity for software vendors to have a mobile phone ‘app’ representative, as many wish to access such social apps on the move. Due to mobile devices not containing open standards, software vendors have quickly realised the impracticality of developing such apps for different mobile devices i.e. iPhone and Blackberry. It is due to the lack of an open standard that, as more devices seek to take a slice of this ‘app’ trend, the number of scenarios to cater for will grow. The future of mobile apps is two-fold, migrate over to open standards or be superseded by a more amenable service already present via PC’s.

The popularity of multi running services does not just provide benefit of having all applications on a single screen. Social networking such as Tweetdeck and email are two of the strongest forms of communication over the internet with similar facilities but many still require more than one due to nature of usage, personal taste or compatibility with someone else. This in essence particularly fits the SaaS model as there is a need to see the event requiring focusing across the spectrum of accounts rather than the screen being religiously tied to one. When the demand becomes strong and it is of benefit for individual services to be part of a more exposed popular ‘container’ this will have a domino effect on all services within that particular domain to have an interface that the container can use. Effectively this container will not only become the market leader instantly; it is in effect representing ‘open standards’. There is therefore a potential for open standards to fall into decline as SaaS grows.

6. Knowledge House Information System 6.1 Introduction KHIS is a web-based CRM/project management system designed in-house to meet the specific requirements of universities and interactions between them. KHIS handles the full project life cycle and supports the sharing of project and client information across disparate teams to allow them to collaborate and be aware of other activities related to their work. KHIS is jointly owned by the five universities in North East England, each of which pays an annual subscription for the service. As part of the fee universities receive free technical support and benefit from continuous patches and functionality upgrades.

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Written in proprietary Adobe ColdFusion and Microsoft SQL Server, KHIS was designed to satisfy four key requirements: security, extensibility, customisability and robustness. The system architecture is such that it could potentially be adapted for use by non-universities to manage client interactions.

6.2 Open Source Potential of KHIS Perhaps the most obvious precursor to releasing an OS version of KHIS would be the need to gain approval from all five North East Universities. Clearly security of confidential data would be a prime concern. However, this could be avoided by removing university-specific customisations and releasing a vanilla version, whilst maintaining the universityspecific KHIS as a standalone system. Having identified five key OS criteria we will now consider the merits of KHIS against each. Cost KHIS is a web-based system and therefore a license is not needed for every computer which accesses it. However KHIS was built using proprietary software and server licenses are currently needed for SQL Server and ColdFusion. To avoid such costs the authors propose migrating to OS alternatives MySQL and Railo Open Source, Railo (2010). It is anticipated that with tweaks to both code and SQL and thorough testing the OS alternative platform could support KHIS, although a thorough technical investigation is recommended to confirm this. Hosting costs are another consideration. KHIS is hosted on the JANET network, JANET (2010) which is governed by strict rules prohibiting commercial use. Even if migrated to Railo and MySQL, unless hosted in-house an installation of KHIS

would incur hosting costs if used commercially.

employed solely to respond to the needs of the subscribing universities.

Maintenance

Training

KH utilises an established CVS and bug reporting system Trac (2010). Were an OS version of KHIS released a separate code branch could be created and made available to external developers. It would be necessary to maintain a separate branch as the core university version of KHIS is heavily customised to meet Higher Education (HE) requirements. Even taking into account the CVS merge functionality, maintaining separate branches could potentially lead to a divergence of code given the heavy customisation of the HE version of KHIS.

At the time of writing the KHIS Training Manual was in the process of being transferred from Microsoft Word to the KHIS wiki to ensure that users have access to the most up-to-date material. As any wiki facilitates, it could be opened up to allow an OS community to contribute content.

As recognised in 3.4 a potential difficulty is that externally submitted code updates may have to be reviewed by the KHIS Development Team which would inevitably detract from their day job. Applying global code updates from the CVS could also corrupt local KHIS installations as such updates could potentially overwrite customisations. Support KH have an established KHIS support mechanism in the form of a wiki (user guide) and bug reporting system (tickets). The authors anticipate this system could be expanded to cater for additional users of an OS version of KHIS. A potential pitfall is that technical knowledge of the system is limited to the core KHIS Development Team. Were KHIS to be released as OS it would be necessary to publish design and best practice guides, and technical specifications to the wiki. As highlighted in 3.6 thought would also have to be given as to how to support an OS KHIS community as KH staff are

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As recognised in 3.5 thought would have to be given as to how to train potential OS users. Currently only limited personnel have sufficient knowledge of KHIS to be able to train new users and their time is consumed by day-to-day duties. This places extra importance on the wiki containing comprehensive training material. Security A key design feature of KHIS is the separation of security logic from code, enabling developers to write new plug-ins without fear of compromising security. In this sense the code is suitable for release to external developers. However the security logic is engrained in the database so external developers would have to exercise extreme caution if working with stored procedures. The authors recommend database updates be strictly regulated and reviewed by the core KHIS Development Team via the CVS. KHIS Mobile 5.2 drew attention to the parallel development of OS applications for mobile devices. During the JISC â&#x20AC;&#x2DC;Trialling Collaborative Online Tools for BCEâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; project a demand emerged for a mobile version of KHIS. However as reported, due to the lack of an open standard for mobiles considerable

overhead would be incurred in catering for the different types of Smartphone. Whilst possible, development of KHIS mobile apps should perhaps be considered as an independent OS project.

The authors recommend a more comprehensive study into KHIS and SaaS as the subject of a separate paper.

6.3 Software as a Service Potential of KHIS

The findings of this paper illustrate the difficulty in determining what is meant by both open source and open standards and how they are commonly misinterpreted. The collection of case studies suggested that open source software has many other benefits to the user other than strictly financial with the benefits for open standards being guaranteeing interoperability.

Although beyond the remit of this paper, having touched upon SaaS in 5.1 it is worth briefly highlighting the potential candidature of KHIS for release as SaaS. The core difference between an OS and SaaS KHIS would be a single centrally managed installation with multiple customised accounts, instead of multiple local installations. This model would negate several of the problems identified with releasing KHIS as OS. Firstly a single centrally managed installation would require only one ColdFusion license and one SQL Server license plus hosting fee. Secondly such a setup would be easier to manage and remove the risk of code diversions from multiple customised installations. Thirdly patches and new functionality could be easily applied and immediately available to all users. However on a cautionary note several drawbacks spring to the authorsâ&#x20AC;&#x2122; mind. Careful consideration would have to be given as to whether the service was licensed as free or subscription-based. Either way a Service Level Agreement (SLA) would be required placing more responsibility/liability on the host. A centrally managed service with multiple accounts would also introduce data protection issues; it would be necessary to exercise extreme care when creating new accounts and applying permissions to ensure sensitive data was not exposed. 12 | P a g e

7. Conclusions

The future of both open source and standards is dependent on its adaptation to new software models and its ability to take over several of the more popular software domains currently held by proprietary software vendors. In considering the candidature of releasing KHIS as OS this paper has identified both positives and negatives. The biggest positive is that the architecture of the system is such that it can be rapidly customised and extended. A training wiki, CVS and bug reporting system are also established. The biggest drawbacks are time and cost. Technical and user knowledge of KHIS is limited to a small subset of people who are occupied by day-to-day duties. The release of an OS version would require a significant investment of time initially and licensing and hosting costs could deter interested parties. Time and money permitting, however, it can be concluded that the potential exists to release an OS vanilla version of KHIS.

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Waring.T & Maddocks.P (2005) Open Source Software implementation in the UK public sector: Evidence from the field and implications for the future International Journal of Information Management Vol 25, pp 411–428

Case Studies British Educational Communication and Technology Agency (2005) Open Source Software in Schools – A case study report. Retrieved 5th May 2010 from: publications.becta.org.uk/download.cfm?resID=25908 Campbell-Kelly.M (2008) Will The Future Be Open Source? – Tracing the course of influential computing development and consider possible paths to new paradigm. Communications of the ACM, Vol 51. Issue 10. Pp 21-23 Fitzgerald.B & Kenny.T (2003) Open Source Software can improve the Health of the bank balance – The Beaumont Hospital Experience. Retrieved 5th May 2010 from: www.netproject.com/docs/Beaumont.pdf Microsoft (2004) London Borough of Newham Chooses Microsoft Solution Over Open Source as Best Overall Value Options. Retrieved 9th May 2010 from: www.egovmonitor.com/reports/rep9455.doc Open Source Academy. Case Study regarding the project to install a bespoke email solution at Suffolk (affiliated to the University of East Anglia). Retrieved 6th May 2010 from: www.opensourceacademy.org.uk/solutions/casestudies/suffolk-college/file Open Office – OpenOffice.org 1 software meets finance company’s needs for Microsoft Office compatibility and cuts costs. Retrieved 7th May 2010 from: www.openoffice.org/product/docs/skilldeal.pdf Watson.T (2009) Open Source, Open Standards and Re-Use: Government Action Plan. Retrieved 9th May 2010 from: ww.cabinetoffice.gov.uk/media/141716/090224opensource.pdf

Websites Down.K (201), Business and Community Engagement Programme. Retrieved 29th April 2010 from: www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/bce.aspx Perens.B, Open Standards Principles and Practice. Retrieved 3rd May 2010 from: perens.com/OpenStandards/Definition.html Stallman.R (2007) Why Open Source misses the point of Free Software. Retrieved 5th May 2010 from: www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.html Asay.M (2007) Applying the principles of open source to Software as a Service. Retrieved 6th May 2010 from: news.cnet.com/8301-13505_3-9793559-16.html Trumba (2007) Five Benefits of Software as a service. Retrieved 7th May 2010 from: www.trumba.com/connect/knowledgecenter/pdf/Saas_paper_WP-001.pdf 14 | P a g e

Orlando.D (2009) Top 10 tips for writing successful Software as a Service. Retrieved 5th January 2010 from: www.ibm.com/developerworks/opensource/library/os-cloudsaas/index.html JANET (2010) JANET, the UK’s education and research network. Retrieved 3rd June 2010 from: www.ja.net/services/index.html Railo (2010) Railo Open Source. Retrieved 27th May 2010 from: www.getrailo.com/com/index.cfm/products/railo-open-source/ Stewart.A (2010) Collaborative Tools 4 BCE. Retrieved 3rd June 2010 from: collaborativetools4bce.jiscinvolve.org/wp/about-2/ Trac (2010) The Trac Project. Retrieved 9th June 2010 from: trac.edgewall.org/ Wilson.J (2010) OSS Watch – About Open Source. Retrieved 9th June 2010 from: www.osswatch.ac.uk/about/faq.xml

Appendix A Number 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10

Criteria Free Redistribution Source Code Derived Works Integrity of The Author’s Source Code No Discrimination Against Persons or Groups No Discrimination Against Fields Of Endeavour Distribution Of Licence Licence Must Be Specific to a Product Licence Must Not Restrict Other Software Licence Must Be Technology-Neutral

Source manipulated from Open Source Initiative (OSI). Retrieved 5th June 2010 from: www.opensource.org/docs/osd

Appendix B 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8

Linux kernel GNU utilities and compliers Ubuntu Three BSDs (FreeBSD, NetBSD, OpenBSD) Samba MySQL BIND Sendmail

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9 OpenSSH and OpenSSL 10 Apache Dineley.D, Mobley.H (2009) Top 10 Open Source Hall of Famers â&#x20AC;&#x201C; InfoWorldâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s top pick for the most indispensable open source software of all time. Retrieved 7th June 2010 from www.infoworld.com/d/opensource/top-10-open-source-hall-famers-848

Appendix C Availability

Principle Open Standards are available for all to read and implement.

Practice Open Standards are available for all to read and implement. Thus: 1.

Maximum EndUser Choice

Open Standards create a fair, competitive market for implementations of the standard. They do not lock the customer in to a particular vendor or group.

The best practice is for the standards text and reference implementation to be available for free download via the Internet. 2. Any software project should be able to afford a copy without undue hardship. The cost should not far exceed the cost of a college textbook. 3. Licenses attached to the standards documentation must not restrict any party from implementing the standard using any form of software license. 4. The best practice is for software reference platforms to be licensed in a way that is compatible with all forms of software licensing, both Free Software (Open Source) and proprietary. However, see Predatory Practices regarding license restrictions that may be appropriate for a software reference platform. Open Standards create a fair, competitive market for implementations of the standard. Thus: 1.

No Royalty

Open Standards are free for all to implement, with no royalty or fee. Certification of compliance by the standards organization may involve a fee.

They must allow a wide range of implementations, by businesses, academia, and public projects. 2. They must support a range of pricing from very expensive to zero-price. Open Standards are free for all to implement, with no royalty or fee. Certification of compliance by the standards organization may have a fee. Thus: 1.

No Discrimination

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Open Standards and the organizations that administer them do not favour one

Patents embedded in standards must be licensed royalty-free, with nondiscriminatory terms. 2. Certification programs should include a low or zero cost self-certification, but may include higher-cost programs with enhanced branding. Open Standards and the organizations that administer them do not favour one

implementer over another for any reason other than the technical standards compliance of a vendor's implementation. Certification organizations must provide a path for low and zero-cost implementations to be validated, but may also provide enhanced certification services.

Extension or Subset

Predatory Practices

Implementations of Open Standards may be extended, or offered in subset form. However, certification organizations may decline to certify subset implementations, and may place requirements upon extensions (see Predatory Practices). Open Standards may employ license terms that protect against subversion of the standard by embrace-and-extend tactics. The licenses attached to the standard may require the publication of reference information for extensions, and a license for all others to create, distribute, and sell software that is compatible with the extensions. An Open Standard may not otherwise prohibit extensions.

A standards organization that wishes to support itself through certification branding should establish a premium track and a low-cost or zero-cost track. Generally, the premium track will provide a certification lab outside of the vendor's facility to verify a vendor's implementation and enhanced branding: a certification mark that indicates a greater certainty of verification and financial support of the standard. The low or zero-cost track would provide self-certification by the vendor and baseline branding. Implementations of Open Standards may be extended, or offered in subset form. However, certification organizations may decline to certify subset implementations, and may place requirements upon extensions (see Predatory Practices). Open Standards may employ license terms that protect against subversion of the standard by embrace-and-extend tactics. The license may require the publication of reference information and a license to create and redistribute software compatible with the extensions. It may not prohibit the implementation of extensions. 1.

The standards organization may wish to apply an agreement similar to the Sun Industry Standards Source License to the standard documentation and its accompanying reference implementation. The Sun agreement requires publication of a reference implementation (not the actual commercial implementation) for any extensions to the standard. This makes it possible for a standards organization to actively preserve interoperability without stifling innovation.

B.Perens, Open Standards â&#x20AC;&#x201C; Principles and Practice. Retrieved 12th May 2010 from perens.com/OpenStandards/Definition.html

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